Catamite
by leaky.oven
Summary: "Have they Catamites in Antiva?" - "But of course. Same as anywhere, I imagine." - m!surana, genfic slash.
1. Chapter 1

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><p>Aen Surana, newly Harrowed, windswept, ill from the ferry ride, kept his eyes mostly to the intricately stamped armor over Duncan's broad back the duration of the journey from Kinloch Hold. Aen listlessly slouched along the dock, into the foreign canopies of trees, lost in the overwhelmingly complex detail of every leaf and stone and blade of grass announcing the start of his journey to Ostagar. Even the <em>smell<em> of the road unsettled, like waking up from a dream in which Aen was convinced he still slept beside a sooty hearthstone only to taste the ash of his memories well past breakfast; and should he be spared the ash, it was to the scent of rain on rotting logs and upturned soil and the coppery tang of heat as a new rabble of soldiers might march past with the sun on their maille.

In the Circle, Aen had been considered Tall For His Age (or full of Presence at the very least) - but the world outside the Tower offered no comparison, in that of age and race and gender, than elves who wore their ears untrimmed and sweated and labored and built themselves up into compact things with labor-thick bones under sunned hides draped by inglorious rags. The Circle Magi, both elven and non, were indeed a gaunt and austere lot by dint of their trade; appetites delicate from captivity and sedentary deskwork, what fat this might have collected around their middles was trundled away up tower stairs day in and day out. It also held that the Templars on the lower rung of command doubled as the hard laborers and supplies couriers, cobbling the bodies of the mages with disuse, for any skinny escapee with as low stamina had less chance for survival beyond the tower's shelter.

So Aen Surana remained a skulking ghoul next to which elves he could barter into the comparison. Aen was also flat-eared, not quite literally, by the ritual infancy trimming that servant-class elves had popularized through Orlais two ages past. It was by the sake of symmetry and desirability, that most elves born outside Dalish holds would find themselves with smaller ears, ears that had been shaved and pinned into their sleek shape, ears that had been made safe against louse and tick and wound and infection (so the docit would recant, and thirty coppers to he for the operation).

Footsore and road-weary, Aen would wither from Duncan's concern. His back screamed under the weight of his pack; he knew true hunger for the first time in his life; the open landscape of their travel left him disoriented while the dust of the road settled in grimy patches over the damp sweat of his robes. He sorely missed his tiny apprentice bed in the overcrowded apprentice dorm, the cloying beeswax aroma of the Tower's chantry, the constant hushed bustle of familiar dreary faces inside familiar dreary walls. He sorely missed those he had come to count as colleagues and family, and even felt a heaviness in his chest for those he might have counted as enemy.

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><p>"You wouldn't happen to be another mage, would you?"<p>

Aen's stomach gives a small hop in the throes of homesickness. That tone of voice, the nasal infliction, specific to a certain branch of Chantry schooling, coming from the man just beyond the stone archway. Aen's smile is wan. "You wouldn't happen to be another Templar, would you?"

"Huh. Not exactly." The man scratches his stubbled chin, moves to hold his hand out as if to shake, but drops it last minute to his side, stepping back with a clank of armor and a low wave. "I'm the newest Warden, Alistair."

"Duncan sent me to find you."

"Ah, you're the new recruit then. Ein, was it?"

"Aen, actually, and a mage as well if you've no protest, ser Templar."

Alistair coughs, clears his throat. "No, I… Let me apologize for that. _Very much_ not a Templar, if you can believe it. Not that it should matter, as _we_ are all supposed to cooperate against the Blight, aren't we? You know, afternoon hand-holding and campfire song and the like."

Aen's smile goes distant, pale eyes sparkling in the late afternoon sun. "Hmm, yes, and I am both a mage and an elf. All we need to complete our troupe is a stoic dwarven padfoot and some Seherian outlaw. We might inspire a minstrel's epic."

Alistair grins, hiding the expression behind a fidget at his nose. "Met the King, I take it."

The tension in Aen's stomach shifts lower, tightens, a sweeter pain. "Curiously enthusiastic, our Royal Highness. Not even a Warden yet and he practically marries me."

"_Hah_. Ever notice how he refers to the order as 'The Fabled Grey Wardens'? _Fabled_, as in _doesn't exist_. No wonder Loghain can't take us seriously."

Aen sniffs, ring-heavy hands crossed behind his back, rocking forward on his heels. "Almost insulted he didn't ask after my Griffin."

"Ha!" Alistair shakes his head, pinching his eyes shut, attempting to sober. "Well, that's enough of that. Did Duncan say where we're to meet him?"

"Center of the camp."

"Right. Let's hunt up your fellow Warden candidates," Alistair rubs his chin before pointing down at Aen's shoes, " - and get you a proper set of boots. You're going to need them where we're going."

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><p>Aen could not stop staring at Daveth. When he wasn't sneaking glances Alistair's way (a striking resemblance to <em>someone<em>, couldn't quite figure it out), or contemplating the tree branches overhead (none of them taller than the Tower, surely), or shooting a fireball into the mouth of a frenzied wolf (to preserve the pelts, which were worth coin), he was staring at the charismatic provincial cutpurse. He'd never seen anyone built quite that way who could move so fast, for starters, so the interest kipped on a while as purely academic. Then, less meaningfully, Aen realized that he had never studied anyone built quite that way, at all, since most Templars kept their Heavy Plate on at all times and the ones who didn't looked more like Ser Jory.

Daveth proved himself braver than the Knight with whom they traveled, which earned Aen's respect, and even showed a fair sense of humor, which earned Aen's fondness. The rogue in question then revealed his propensity to flirt at the most inopportune moments, namely in the middle of a Hurlock ambush, which earned Aen's immediate and helpless infatuation.

When Morrigan first made her appearance, it was to Daveth Aen nervously glanced before stepping between his fellows and the unknown interloper. When they made their report to Duncan, it was to Daveth Aen relinquished the recount of meeting the swamp witch, though Daveth's version had more frogs in it than prudent (_they looked at us like they had souls, like they was telling us to turn back_). When they took the darkspawn taint into their bodies, it was over Daveth's corpse that Aen lingered, helping Duncan strip the armor for the Quartermaster.

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><p>x . X . x<p>

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><p>Alistair liked to hum, deep in the back of his throat, before asking a question. "So, 'Aen'. What's that short for, anyway?"<p>

Aen considered that hum the most appealing noise in the history of all Thedas, right up there with the sound of tearing bread and the wet drop of a quill-tip into a full inkpot. He pauses to enjoy the warmth of Alistair's curiosity before answering, "Not short for anything, I don't suppose."

"You 'don't suppose'?" Humor colors Alistair's confusion, as if he already knew the answer and was just _talking_ like that and grinning out of the side of his face to turn Aen's knees to jelly. On purpose. The sod. "What, you took a falling book to the head and can't remember your own name now?"

Aen cannot get the breath in to answer straight away, and this irritation shows in his words, "I set my own swaddling _krattel_ afire; the infant the Circle took in could hardly remember not to soil itself."

"Oh..." Alistair's eyebrows jump, and he shrugs. "Fair enough."

"I think, in anger, an elder once called me _Ainla O'innegh_ or _O'linnoch_ or something. Could have been a Dalish curse more than my actual name, but there you go. A mouthful of syllables as difficult to pronounce as it is to spell. Good riddance."

"At least you got over the trouser-soiling habit."

Aen chuckles, the raw edge of embarrassment ebbing as he and Alistair trundle down the boggy forest path - careful on the heels of their guide, who is casting annoyed glances over her white shoulder at no interruption. Aen moves their conversation on to the more recent circumstance of grief and shock and betrayal and the noises that had moments ago been coming out of his fellow Warden that were nowhere near as nice as a hum or a laugh. "How fare you, Alistair?"

"Oh, peachy." There is a bite to Alistair's usual sarcasm, wounded and over-tired.

Morrigan halts mid-stride, testing the wind. "We are clear of the horde and shall camp here for the night. No fires, and if either of you snore I shall not hesitate to sew shut the offending nostrils."

Alistair drops his shield and kneels to the leaf-litter with a groan, settling back on his haunches with his swordtip digging idle circles in the dirt. Aen shuffles closer, sweeping a bit of the forest bracken aside so that they might sit back-to-back for a bit of warmth. Alistair starts at the contact. "You don't need to do that. I'll be fine."

"Just as well, at least one of us might be."

"Oh... of course. Sorry." A hard sigh. "Maker, _everyone_ is gone." Alistair leans back against Aen's bony shoulders, regarding the smoky night sky through the grasping fingers of dark branches, a fleeing bit of wildlife darting from tree to tree in black silhouette. "You get some sleep."

Aen's chest jumps with a silent grunt. "_This_ mage just spent nearly a day and a half in a bed, unconscious. _You_ get some sleep."

"I told you first."

Aen elbows Alistair, the hollow thump of bone meeting shield. "You elected me leader."

Alistair elbows similarly, the creak of armor that can't quite reach the thin body squared at the middle of his back. "I can pull rank on important things, and there's no need for us to both keep awake."

Morrigan pipes up at last, bewailing under her breath, "There _is_ need for you to kindly shut your flapping maws. Dire need. Most urgent, dire necessity and need. You, little Mage, let the Templar alone to his childish weeping. You, inconsolable prat of a Templar, do not presume to make demands of your betters."

There is a small scuffle of undergrowth, two weary and chagrined Wardens elbowing each other over who made the swamp-witch angry while vying for the softest patch of dirt on which to rest their heads, wounded and over-tired and merrily distracted by the nonsense of their quarrel.

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><p>. x . X . x .<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

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><p>Castle Redcliffe's underbelly is quiet, the lightless dungeons cluttered with the remains of a gruesome battle. A condemned man huddles in his cell, privately soothing what the Teyrna's interrogation had cost in skin and muscle. He twitches at the sound of footsteps, wipes the sting of sweat from his eyes and pulls reluctant limbs to a stand as a torchlight's glimmer approaches. "So I assume you're the one going to perform the execution. That's... fitting."<p>

The newcomer is an elf, not much younger than the prisoner, who speaks with the same nasal inflection of Tower schooling. "I knew you'd enjoy the irony." Cell bars interrupt Aen's approach, and the two men regard each other with wariness.

The prisoner scoffs, "The only thing I want to enjoy at this point is a good night's sleep."

"Going a bit easy on me, aren't you?" Aen bends to drag a corpse this way, another that way, sizing up and dissembling. He works quickly, trading the castle's precious silence for the determined clang and skitter of bones divested their armor.

Warily, the prisoner drifts to his cell door to puzzle through the scene. "I only wish you'd get it over with. I'm sick with hunger and can't feel my feet in this chill."

Aen's tone is deep and quiet, words quipped by uncertainty. "I know of a rune to lure the Phylactery, so that Templars might find their way to a corpse."

The prisoner throws his hands forward, forearms pale and bruised in their flash through the gloom. "Oh, excellent! Good bloody riddance to you as well."

"You don't mean that, Jowan. Stand back."

Jowan flashes a defiant eye through the bars. His voice turns flinty, spun form its usual plaintive drawl into something adult in its exhaustion. "Going to break the door in? Wanted to end this face-to-face?"

"Kindly put your teeth away and do as I bid."

"You never give in, do you? Not even for what you know is right?" A hard whisper, "Not even for me?" Calling out, "Was it worth it, in the end? Did Irving promote you for your Loyalist accord?" Jowan pulls his arms from the barred door and begins to pace, shaking with pain and agitation, raking matted black hair from bruised eyes. "Nevermind anyway, all of it. I'm glad that it's you. I'm glad this will all be over, and that you're the one to end it."

The cell door is wrenched open on its old hinges. A helmet lands at Jowan's bare feet, rocking idly in the terse silence as the mages regard each other over the open threshold. Aen pockets the heavy iron cell key and gestures at Jowan with his staff. "I'll need those robes off you."

"Oh. We're ending me out of uniform, are we? Still a bit of a righteous git, are you? Thought the real world would have knocked all that idealism clean out of that rat-faced little skull of yours."

"Like it knocked all the sense from _your_ donkey head? _Maker_, have you even the strength _left_ to strip your own stinking carcass? I don't have to come in there and undress you, do I?"

"What the nine hells does it matter! Take all the clothing you need once you've melted or exploded or charred me or whatever it is you've deemed the most _justified_ for this occasion. And good bloody luck with your own nightma -" Jowan stops short as a pair of greaves joins the helmet at his feet.

Aen bends to tug the rest of his collection into view. "Keep your voice down and put this damn armor on or _by Andraste's flaming tits_, I _shall_ come in there and dress you myself."

Jowan blinks. Slowly, gingerly, he manages to drag his protesting body from one uniform to the other. Leather and maille rest heavy on bruises and swollen cuts, the armor cumbersome and stiff as he works in stunned silence. Then, a quiet revelation, "Don't believe I've ever heard you blaspheme in all the years we've known each other."

"Let's just say I've been keeping some rather colorful company." Aen gathers Jowan's discarded robes, pale fingers glancing over the redressed corpse to tug the robes into place and complete their ruse. "We can fool the Phylactery to a certain extent, but in order to do as much I'm going to need some of your blood to draw a beacon."

"Don't bother, I know the rune." Jowan waves Aen away and crouches to the task, slipping a gauntlet off to pull a belted knife over his fingertips. "Is this goodbye, then?" Jowan doesn't look up from his work, doesn't meet Aen's flinty blue eyes - sharp, foreign, intelligent, at once fascinating and foreboding and altogether so very _elven_.

"No." Aen crosses his arms, bearing held fast despite the sorrow passing the line of his shoulders. "The last I saw you, it was goodbye. _This_ is a debt between us."

Jowan scoffs, shaking his head. He stands but makes no move to drag the replacement corpse back into the cell, already intoxicated by the idea of true freedom and woozy from relief, pain, confusion. All things to be sorted in their time, and this was not that time, leaning heavily against gore-speckled brick under the weak sputter of a wall torch. "All right, next time I'm in a position to kill you, you can call on this debt. Because that's _completely_ likely. Sure. What do you really want from me?"

Aen uncrosses his arms, stepping forward to lopsidedly drag Jowan's replacement corpse into the empty cell.

Jowan readjusts a gauntlet, mentally preparing himself for the long trek away from the castle. "Don't you dare suggest a kiss."

Aen draws his staff from its resting place against the wall, tapping the cobblestones thrice before lunging forward with both arms, wringing an unearthly blaze into the cramped cell, charring any discernible features off the corpse. He steps back to watch the flames snap and feed, smokeless and oily. "Would you honestly deny me, at this point?"

Unsteadily toeing a path through the dungeon's carnage toward the storage exit, Jowan laughs. "Here you've gone and found a sense of humor, and at the _most_ appropriate moment, too."

Aen grunts noiselessly. "I have a good mentor, skilled in the art of cynicism." The blaze lessens behind them, sizzling, sputtering, the dark following on their heels. "You would like him; the both of you might engage in whiny, sarcastic luncheons - whole tea parties dedicated to rants of entitlement and contests of self-pity." Aen keeps himself close behind Jowan, arms crossed behind his back, cradling his staff. _Tick, clack_, the wood narrates a slight limp against the cobblestone.

"Sounds lovely," Jowan pants, pausing to readjust the armor, tugging the helmet on. "What's the catch?"

"He was a Templar, of a sorts."

Jowan's laugh is loud, and seems to take most of his remaining strength. He bends to one knee to catch his breath, a metallic rasp through the helmet. "Just your type!"

"Sshhh," Aen warns, palms tamping down the air between them, glancing over his shoulder.

"I bet he's tall and blond and dumber than a sack of clay bricks, too." Jowan rights himself, holding an arm out for support.

A tense moment of silence grips the pair before Aen lends his shoulder in wordless consent. "I wouldn't say _tall_."

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><p>. x .<p>

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><p>"You've been awfully quiet." Alistair's cautious observation interrupts the crackle of the sitting-room's hearth, pulling Aen out of his daze.<p>

Aen blinks, running fingertips over the recent scar reaching from eyebrow to the crest of his skull, smoothing down the bright red hair kept short-cropped in case of just such an injury. "Never considered 'quiet' an awful thing."

"Riiight, I guess that means I should leave you alone, then. It's just, I got the impression that you knew that mage, the one you - er... Just thought you might need an ear to bend. About that."

"It's different than killing darkspawn, isn't it?" Aen agrees noncommittally, "Or a bear. Or a demon-possessed maleficar. Have you ever killed a man?"

"No more than you, out on the field. Nobody I knew or had to speak with face-to-face, that is. But I attended a Harrowing as part of my training, once. An, er, unsuccessful one." Alistair claims a stuffed bench opposite Aen, clad in tunic and breeches, a rare state considering all the travel and fighting they usually saw with no rest from armor. "She was just a girl, and suddenly wasn't, and they had to run her through." Alistair pauses, apprehensive over the rivalry they often referenced in jest, Templar and Mage. "I could have done that for you, you know. He was a blood mage and I've already been trained against that sort of thing, been prepared and then, well, then, maybe, you wouldn't have had to."

"I think you already know why I volunteered."

"Oh, sure, I have my guesses. Either you had a score to settle, or," Alistair cracks his knuckles, elbows on knees set apart with both hands a bridge, and bows his head to regard Aen from under heavy eyebrows. "Or you cared for him, very much."

Aen levels his stare, unblinking. "Which do you think it was, I wonder?"

"Both? Please don't say both." Alistair suffers through a hard sigh, head dropping in a nod. "It is both, isn't it. _Maker_, we can't go two bloody days without running into a betrayer, or assassin, or ancient arch-rival of indeterminable intent that has to be put to final rest, or -"

Aen snorts, "The last is Flemeth, is it? The Crows have yet to pursue our newest recruit, to be fair about the assassins."

"Right, but how many mercenaries have been sent after us outside of the Loghain conflict?"

Aen counts from his fingers, eyes to the ceiling, "Leliana's Orlesian problem, Templars after Morrigan, or the people who just don't like Sten's face?"

Alistair chuckles darkly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Hang it all. I didn't come here to whine. We'll be leaving at dawn for Denerim to find this Genitivi fellow, and I wanted to make sure you were all right. If you needed to be left alone, or, or not. Sorry, I'm terrible at this."

"It's all right, Alistair. People die." Aen delivers a leveling stare. Though he had come around to be the reassurance in the middle of being reassured, as was common enough, still he tilted his head and could bring no further words on the matter.

Alistair gives Aen time to speak further, before clapping both hands against his knees and straightening in his seat. "You're taking this pretty well. So, he wasn't a friend?"

"Alistair," Aen searches the air between them, mouth working over a few false starts. "Jowan was, ah, a classmate, of mine. I brought him to execution for the crime of blood magic, and on suspicion that he might have played some hand in the Kinloch massacre we recently overturned." Aen shrugs a shoulder to dislodge the heavy weight of anger, mouth pulled back in distaste. "Not to mention the havoc we have faced securing Redcliffe. I'd have hanged the bugger for this whole mess alone, with or without the added grief of _knowing_ him."

Alistair interrupts quietly, "But you did know him."

"Aye. I also _knew_ one of the garden-cows kept for the Sommersday feast. Still enjoyed the roast."

"Hm. I don't know if you're serious about that or not. Welp," Alistair rises slowly, as if still clad in plate-maille, reluctant to take his leave too soon. "I'm always here to talk, if you need it." At Aen's return silence, "Right. Get some rest, then."

Aen had hunched toward the fire, thumbnail at his bottom lip. "Aye. Set Hound to the yard on your way out."

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><p>. x .<p>

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><p>Alistair mops the back of his neck, taking up a heavy oaken chair in the dim library hall. "He's joking easily enough, so it can't be too bad."<p>

"Yet still I wonder," Wynne purses her lips, eyes narrow as she closes the volume before her. She regards Alistair as if just noting his presence, smiling in apology. "Regardless, I appreciate your indulgence on the matter. A mage knows only the Circle in which he or she is raised, until they are skilled enough and old enough to leave, to be sent with Templar escort to a town in which they might utilize their talents. Aen may have passed his Harrowing, but he was still young yet to have left Irving's guidance."

Alistair leans back, chair creaking under his weight. "That your professional opinion, is it?"

"I didn't directly tutor the boy and haven't much recall of his youth, but I _do_ remember Irving's headache over a certain red-headed upstart that had squirreled himself away in the rafters after they took his Phylactery sample." Wynne's chuckle is warm and reproachful at the same time. "He may not sound it, but our grand _Ser_ Warden Surana only just turned nineteen this autumn." Wynne takes a contemplative stand from her high-backed chair, hands folding placidly one in the other as she nears an oil lamp to brighten its flame. "Despite all his arrogance and bravado, Aen is still very young indeed to be a Mage without a tower."

"I've got an uncomfortable feeling about where you're going with this." Alistair stands to join Wynne nearer the lamp, crossing his arms as he seeks a comfortable position against a bookshelf. "Without a tower, but not without a Templar, is that it?"

"Very astute, young man."

"You honestly think that could happen, Wynne? Honestly? Aen; the never-say-demon, stone-cold maleficar slayer; the Grey Warden; _submit_ to abominable possession? And I'd have to be the one to cut him down?"

"No, Alistair," Wynne scoffs. "Maker's sake, _try_ to pay attention." Wynne dusts the front of her skirts as she takes up her previous rest at the tableside. "It is to my understanding, that Templars are to protect their charges from the outside world as much as they protect the outside world from their charges. Is this not a thing of which you are aware?"

Alistair chuckles, cold and dry, "Have you _talked_ to that man, like, _ever_? He's not someone who really needs protecting. If anything I'd do better to act as a buffer on behalf of the poor 'outside world'."

"Oh, dash it all," Wynne is shaking her head, bright eyes soft and sad. "Would it be any clue to my point, that Aen never answers me with the same sort of brevity with which he addresses you?"

"Well of course not, you're only this very, er, matronly, can't-curse-around-you, someone or another. To him. I'm guessing."

"Nor Morrigan? Nor Leliana, for that matter? That in fact he meets sarcasm _with_ sarcasm, and genuity _with_ genuity?"

Alistair makes a face as if he's sampled bad stew. "I don't know what to say to that. Other than maybe suggest you give any future counsel yourself and you're welcome for the favor by the way?"

Wynne hums, and her mouth pinches up in thought, conceding with a nod. "Such a hardship you've faced on my account. I wager you were called on to discuss _feelings_. I wager it was _unbearable_."

"It was, really." Alistair turns his head, working a crick free of his neck, "I even might have sprained something."

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><p>x . X . x<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

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><p>Aen sits at fireside, back propped against a log, staring into the tumble of embers and sparks as he prods the flames to newer life with the butt of his staff. The individuals of their group bustle at their patrol stations, in their tents, over plates of stew or armor repairs or weapon honing.<p>

Zevran cocks a hip to put away a belted dagger before taking his seat on a fireside log, beside the man to whom he had sworn the debt of his life. "Tsk. Not still moping, are we? About the, eh," his hand twists in the air, searching for the Ferelden translation, "all of the business with the horrifying Fade monsters, with all of the invading of the bodies of your comrades and destroying all that you once held dear, and all that?"

Aen's posture accepts Zevran's company, but his voice is reproachful. "No. Completely different mope, I assure you."

"The Blight?"

Aen sighs, cracks a tension out of his neck. "I shall never mope over _that_ so much as fight it tirelessly, and with pride."

"Very good." Zevran nods his approval, sliding down to more comfortably rest his arse on soft dirt and to lie his shoulders against the log, sighing in his relaxation. "Just the usual sore-backed, weary-footed sulk of the perpetually hungry-and-cold, then?"

Aen scoffs, crossing one ankle over the other in the dirt, cloth shoes angled carefully beside Zevran's hard leather boots, toward the dense heat of the cookfire. "What value is the knowing, for an assassin of your caliber?"

Zevran hums, elbowing the skinny Warden at his side in a lazy stroke. "I am simply curious. Curiosity and boredom are recipe for gossip, you see, and I cannot very well face our veteran bard without first arming myself with a morsel of new information. Yes?"

"Oh," Aen chuckles, dry but indulgent. "The uh, the maleficar, back in Redcliffe. I knew him." A shake of the head. "The short of it is that my successes have been killing far more people for far longer than my mistakes, in a sort of round-about fashion. That is the reason I mope."

Zevran studies the charred stones that line the crackling fire's pit, sun-pale eyebrows drawn down, arms crossing over his flat belly. "I may know a thing or two about such mistakes. And successes."

"So I imagine, ser Death-For-Hire." Aen bites his lower lip, large front teeth disappearing behind a frown. "Care to join me in my sulk?"

The bright-eyed awareness snaps back into Zevran's expression and he chuckles, shaking his head. "No, no. Your story, vague as it might be, it merely strikes a familiar chord." A waving hand, a shaking head, "Hm, no matter. Probably read it in a book somewhere, complete with intriguing scandal between the virtuous Circle elf and evil Bloodmage shem."

"I confess to be a sucker for the evil shems. Have they catamites in Antiva?"

Zevran sputters on nothing more substantial than his own breath, head rolling back against the log to laugh. "They do at that! Same as anywhere, though I have not yet traveled so much of the world as to make any promises." Pleased, now, merry in both eye and voice, "And here I'd been prepared to wrest a tiny morsel of gossip only to be thrown in the pot, _pandemonio_." A playful tweak to Aen's leg, a slap to his bony knee. "Never stop surprising me, dear Warden."

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><p>x . X . x<p>

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><p>Oghren stands no taller than Aen's chest, yet still he carries himself as if all around him are children scurrying underfoot. "Elf."<p>

Aen looks over his shoulder, then down. "Uh, dwarf?"

Oghren sways in place, squinting over the red blossom across his nose. "Nug dirt. Not you, Warden. I thought you were the other elf. You surfacers all look the same, blast it."

"Hmm. Perhaps the tankard of booze you're trying to peer through doesn't help the distinction?"

Oghren wobbles forward to glare at Aen in the fading light of dusk. "Can't stare through a tankard. 'S opaque. What're they teaching you in them towers, anyway?" A careful scrutiny, "Eheh, besides buggery," the last word is drawn out into a leer.

Aen squares his jaw, eyes narrowed.

Oghren coughs, shrugging his closest approximation to an apology. "Aw, sod it. Thought you knew how to spar." A tremendous belch, blunt fingers scratching under a neatly braided beard. "Guess ol' Oghren ain't in the club yet. Haven't met my quota of darkspawn threshing to warrant a bit 'o comradely ribbing?" A mercurial shift in mood, drunk and loose with emotion, "The Pit, if I haven't! I been culling darkspawn in the Deep Roads before your mother had the sense to pop you off her teat, you pointy-eared bronto's arse!" A very fragrant hug assaults Aen, brusque and jostling.

Aen steadies Oghren lest he stumble them both into the fire, raising a pale eyebrow. "You want me to... insult you?"

"Feh. If you don't get it, I ain't eg'splaining it to you. Guess it's a Warden thing, but you'll have to let me 'n the Sten in on it sometime. That giant creepy duster could show your ancestors a thing or two about deadpan!"

"I could show your _mother_ a thing or two about deadpan."

Oghren lets out a heavy sigh, sour enough that even he himself blanches in its wake. "Too little too late, Warden. Appreciate the effort, though."

"My apologies. I'll think up something better for next time."

"Hehe. Aye, all right then."

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>Leliana holds her breath before every question; whether in translation from her native language or for the sake of tact, Aen cannot yet tell. "Is it very difficult, staying devout as a mage?"<p>

Aen likes to take a moment before each answer to breathe, to think, to plot. "Sometimes. Mostly not." He drags his side of the tent up, meeting Leliana in the middle as they gather and fold in tandem.

"What about as an elf? I hear the Dalish peoples keep the worship of their old gods, the Creators and Destroyers, alive and well. Have you never been curious?"

Aen's mouth pulls back in a thoughtful frown, "I never studied theology, no. Half the people in the tower worshiped Andraste fervently while the other half didn't much care either way."

"Half of the...? You mean the Chantry sisters, and the Templars stationed there?"

"Exactly they." Aen hums in contemplation, skin flushed with the effort of their exercise as they pack camp. "You know, though a Loyalist, I never could agree with the idear that lyrium was ever a natural thing to put into a non-mage body. Seeing the horror first hand, the addiction and the mental decay? No infallible god would sanction that, especially not as mandatory doctrine. Not if he truly loved his children."

Leliana bends cheerfully to the next tent. "Are you suggesting what I have thought, many times? That the Chant was created by man, and therefore prone to flaw?"

"I am more convinced that the Maker is simply fallible, and loves neither mages nor those who have anything to do with them."

Lightly freckled arms still over the canvas. "Aen. That is _heresy,_" the word drawn out and quiet, doughy with the playfulness of Leliana's reproach.

"No," Aen corrects gently. "_That_ is independent thought. I am a Loyalist and an Andrastian, not some wide-eyed kitten to be bagged and drowned."

"But if you are so convinced our Maker has no love for you, why then would you follow his doctrine?"

Aen's smile is slow and reptilian. "What possible good could that do _me_, I wonder, in a Tower full to brimming with maniacs so devout as to poison to themselves in the name of their fervor. Hmm. Quandary, _indeed_."

Leliana's playful half-agreements sour to a hard-edged suspicion. "I could not suppose you would merely follow the Chant so as to keep in good graces with those who once held authority over you? That would be too convoluted and… and _manipulative._" Leliana jerks the tent out of Aen's hands, bundling it hastily herself.

"Well, let us think that accusation over carefully." Aen bends upright with small pops of bone and joint, groaning as he soothes hands against his lower back. "They were Mages, they whom attempted the usurption of heaven, were they not? It was they, of this inheritance, who drove the Maker from his throne, which in the very least marked them as equals in terms of power, does it not? I should understand if the Maker would foster a continued grief towards those that would pursue him across such insurmountable borders, though this whole Blight nonsense is a _rather_ unfair price for the bargain of it." Air chirps past a tooth as Aen cleans a molar with his tongue, "Indeed, if I were to meet the Maker tomorrow, as a Mage I'd be sure to apologize for the whole disaster - even though I, personally, never broke down heaven's door to burgle its wisdom." Aen bends to firmly grasp the corner of the next tent, folding it slowly to Leliana, whose face was beginning to redden.

"Why do I get the feeling you are having a bit of fun with me?"

"No idea. I really was serious about the Templarate doctrine; among all the hellish practices the Chantry justifies with common public safety and," A scoff, eyes rolling, " 'Moral retribution', lyrium poisoning is the most subtle and by far the worst. Perhaps a close second to the Rite of Tranquility," An unimpressed chuckle, flat and cold, "- Which is your beloved Chantry's magical equivalent of _braining someone_ with a stone." Aen accepts the nearly folded bulk of the tent as it is shoved into his arms. "Or is that something they fail to mention in your peaceful little cloisters," he calls after the retreating bard, a single smatter of applause clop-clopping from behind.

"Well put." Morrigan drawls, sleepy-eyed as a lizard in the sun, standing from another dissembled tent.

"The Maker never insulted me personally, is what I'm trying to say." Aen addresses the air where Leliana had been standing. "It's the Chantry with which I take issue."

"You needn't tell _me_. Only exercise more tact the next time you find yourself in theological debate with a madwoman. Or don't. Actually, I'd rather you continue to stun and appall at your own leisure." A sultry chuckle. "Seeing as personal opinion hardly matters in these our most dire hours together."

"Her feelings matter, Morrigan. As do yours. I do not wish to offend either."

"Mm_hm_." Archly, "Try not to give the wrong impression when you make your apologies. An entire camp of besotted fools would bode as wretchedly as one populated of animosity, if not worse." A quieter, grousing mutter, "For in the least, animosity remains _honest_ and... _clearly_ defined."

"I never said you _couldn't_ kiss me; I was merely surprised! I thought myself too short, or too Loyalist... or too _everything_ for you in any regard."

"Why not the guess of 'too foolish'?"

Aen delivers a close approximation of a _dignified_ sputter - "Because it isn't nearly _half_ true, and remains without say!" Exasperated, indignant, "I endear to your company, Morrigan. I wasn't lying about that. I'm just, _perhaps_, not the most qualified candidate for a husband, or mate, or whatever it was you wanted to do with me."

"'Tis not for you alone to decide, your candidacy."

"In all truth, dear friend and respected lady, had we ever met before Ostagar I would have turned you in to the Templars. Or, er... killed you outright." A cough.

"Such honesty is refreshing, as always." Morrigan's nose is in the air, and she brings her chin down and lowers her voice, stepping closer. "Now, would you care to justify the insanity of that confession?"

Aen sighs in defeat, "The older I get, the less I understand who I used to be." A shrug of bony shoulders, robe clasps glinting in the low light of a setting sun. "My point being, you more deserve a nice sturdy Chasind fellow - bone beads and maleficar reverence and everything - and not some indoctrinated half-starved elf who is going to second-guess your every motive," A pull of the mouth, a wave of apology, "Or grow impatient with your lack of understanding for basic social niceties."

"The fact that your adoration for that thick-witted fellow Warden of yours is sickeningly palpable has _absolutely_ nothing to do with it, I am sure."

"Maker, what a remark!" Aen throws his hands up, laughing to cover the nervous warble of his voice. "Alistair only reminds me of someone I, er, used to know."

Morrigan's eyebrows are raised in smug victory. "No matter. I was simply attempting to spare you from the... _that._ By offering a more logically compatible choice. An extraordinary witch for an extraordinary mage." Voice dropping musically from haughty to frustrated, "Let fools have fools; you deserve better. I happen to _be_ better. Nothing more, nothing less."

Aen is stuffing the last of the bedding into its pack. "Thank you, then. Truly. Yours is the friendship I value most, for as rarely as it is given."

"I..." Morrigan's eyebrows draw up in confusion, or possibly hurt - though Aen would be dashed before he'd guess as much out loud. "Well, you're welcome."

"We can still kiss, if you wish."

A melodious cough of surprise, "To what _blasted end_?"

" - Asks the woman who can't understand a handshake."

* * *

><p>. x . X . x .<p>

* * *

><p>Alistair shifts his sword against his back, lengthening his stride as their company nears the city gates. "We're almost there; Denerim. Are you prepared?"<p>

Aen settles his staff into Bodhan's trundling cart next to the rest of their extraneous gear. He'd changed into commoner's vestments; dark green tunic with gold brocade and faded brown trousers, attempting to slouch like the refugees met along the road. "Do you suppose we'll be recognized?"

"Maker, I hope not. I'll keep my helmet on and you just try and look as meek as possible. The real challenge, after all, is whittling that massive ego of yours to discreet proportions. We may need a bigger whittle-knife. Or possibly some dirt on your face? Ha, yes. Go roll around in that ditch with Hound, that'd be just about perfect."

Aen fusses, eyebrows drawn together. "It's this damn Orlesian tunic. The brocade is too bright."

"So the half-dressed apostate, Antivan assassin, bellowing red-faced Dwarf and bloodied Qunari following us are subtler than imported daywear. Good to know."

Aen chuckles, "At least they never had to be stuffed into any sort of incriminating _uniform_."

"Hah! Yes, we could probably put Morrigan in a set of hunting leathers and nobody would be the wiser."

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>"Warden, a word with you."<p>

"Certainly, Sten. Mind the doorframe; this is an elven inn."

"Your enemy is within this city?"

"In a matter of speaking." Aen lowers his voice, tucking himself into a corner of the room furthest from the door. Sten follows, drawing up a cot as easily as one would draw up a bench. Aen settles back on his perch, content to study the poise held in so much Kossith bulk as Sten settles himself. "We've decided that a full assault would be unwise, given our limited manpower."

"You've an assassin at your disposal, have you not?" Sten is, as always, direct with his sentiments. "Kill the Loghain traitor so that you may conduct the rest of your fetching in relative peace. Or else skip all this nonsense and head for the eye of the snake itself."

"Eye of the storm, is the turn of phrase. Head of the snake."

A silent shift is the closest Sten ever comes to showing his impatience. "The vital part of the darkspawn horde. The Archdemon."

Aen recites the usual argument, "We cannot attack it yet. The greater part of one's strength is knowing when one is weak, Sten."

"The only weakness to be found is what failure you allow within yourself."

"Yes, well." Aen glares carefully, "Last time I went into battle overconfident, I nearly lost an eye. We haven't the luxury of so many disposable limbs and organs that I'd risk that again just so you might find less frustration in our situation."

Sten delivers a frown, the line of it deeper than the usual disapproving grimace. "As you will, then." He picks himself up as nimbly as a man half his height and bulk, pausing mid-stoop under the door to cast a question over the round of his shoulder. "Is it not cowardice?"

Aen studies Sten's broad back, dropping his gaze when it finally meets the flash of the Qunari's unsettling stare. "It is, but," The strength of revelation creeps into Aen's voice, "_I_ have to be the one to accept that, and am probably the only one who must do so - much as I hate it. Much as my pride might dictate to _your_ reason."

Sten scoffs again, turning his grin away. "Let no mistake stand between us - I do not envy you your leadership, _Kadaan_."

Aen folds his hands under his chin, smiling. Recovered. "I'll take that as a compliment."

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>Zevran passed unremarked through the crowd at the inn's taverna to reach the table at which Aen had held vigil for the first quarter of the night. He snaps his fingers at a passing tray attached to a server, addressing Aen, "Come, before you retire, allow me to buy you a drink."<p>

The decline is given in good humor, Aen waving an apology. "Absolutely not. No good at holding my liquor."

"T'che! And how else am I to better know my benefactor if not through an ale-fogged exchange of embarrassing personal anecdotes?" Zevran signals for the first round, only to glance across their table and find the Warden studying him carefully. Zevran had only been under that level of scrutiny from the Warden once before, from the flat of his back while pleading his case to live.

Aen rubs his palms together before steepling his long fingers below his chin, the heavy count of enchanted rings glinting in the soft warm light of the candelabra. "Methought you had only the one embarrassing story. Fall out of any different windows?"

"Eha, _no_, but the very definition of 'exchange' suggests the tale be repaid in kind." A clap of a leather glove atop a thick tabletop. "Come now, no hesitation between _us_, yes?"

Aen's dissecting glare falls on the clay mug of alienage ale, a suitable victim for his suspicion. He draws in breath, collecting his rebuttal, then - "The three months between leaving the Circle and meeting you were uneventful. The king of all Ferelden died, a witch saved my life and practically gave me her daughter, Alistair set out to recruit a small army; nothing you haven't already heard. Before that, I was in a damned _tower_. There was a lot of window-gazing and book-reading. Very dull."

"Dull, until everyone pulled themselves inside-out and began a slaughtering rampage under the command of a madman." An appreciative chuckle lurks up behind Zevran's words, "Keep in mind, Warden, that Ferelden is as foreign and exotic to me as Antiva might be to you, especially as _I_ know about as much of the Magi Circle as you do of the Crows." An expectant eyebrow raise, nudging the suspect mug of ale ever closer.

"Ferelden, exotic?" Aen relents a careful sip, wincing after the hard swallow. Not as strong as the tower's festival stock, but also not nearly as flavorful.

"But of course. There are intriguing swamp witches of legend, for starters."

"Difficult to meet a swamp-witch if your country hasn't a swamp?"

"And the various witches and maleficars we _do_ have are all covered up, head to toe, in a sort of mourning shroud I never got around to investigating. But we digress. Personal anecdote, embarrassing or no; I insist."

Aen samples his ale again, assembling his thoughts. He picks something out of midair, not his own story but something close enough. "They don't always kill mages who flee the tower."

"Now, that... should be a surprise?"

"If you're young enough, and don't end up harming anybody or wrecking any barns or whatever it is the Chantry fears a terrified child would do, they just... bring you back. They don't even punish you, really, just tirelessly retrieve your starved, exhausted carcass." Aen scoffs, memory as warming as the ale in his belly. "Knew a boy who escaped _four_ times before they decided to just leave him out there. He, ah, stopped the escape attempts after a severe beating from a farmer who caught him stealing cabbages." Aen pulls in a breath, then guzzles back half the mug, slamming the drink back to the table and hissing as if he'd just downed bitter medicine. A sharp wheezing cough, loose fist thumping the front his chest to urge out a belch. "Never tried it myself, personally."

Zevran leans forward, grin skeptical. "You never wished to leave all that window-reading and book-gazing? Truly?"

Aen's hand waves lazily through the air, a jeweled fish through a slow tide. "No motivation, nowhere to go, and I had friends in the Circle. Lovers. A roof over my head, every meal a feast, a safe place to build skill and knowledge." After a silent allowance of personal introspection, Aen laughs - because he had never really _thought_ on the matter before. "Perhaps if I had an overbearing Instructor or ever encountered the rare sadistic Templar or even really just got _bored_ I might have been gripped by the same wanderlust that drove those twenty-odd mages to their demonic revolution. I'm not exactly a paragon of virtue; I'm just easily occupied... and maybe a bit lazy."

"Well, the blade that strikes the fell blow and the iron poker that turns the toast might come from the same forge, no? Though if the blade is a metaphor for origin or persons, I have yet to translate." Zevran rambles and Aen puts an elbow to the tabletop, limbs going heavy with drowse. Zevran concludes along the line that dwarven metaphors were all kind of confusing anyway, then clears his throat. "But back to the Tower; you were allowed lovers, did you say?"

"Oh," Aen huffs over his ale, "Nothing so exciting as a tryst with anyone I was sent to kill; but yes, the Chantry never strictly enforced its 'no dalliance outside of sanctioned marriage' policy. Not even with its own."

"Ho-ho! Tempted a virgin priestess, did we?"

"No." Aen's face clouds over, ale set carefully back to the table. "Jowan was the one who... no." He peers sideways at Zevran. "You _do_ know what 'catamite' means, do you not?"

"Yes. I have even been called as much, but you knew this. Why?"

"Nononono." The ale was working warm fingers up Aen's spine. Another mug appeared before him, and he pointed over it to accuse his table-guest. "You're a bleeding indiscriminate opportunist, is what you are, and I'm not that. No, I am a catamite in the strictest definition of the term - "

Zevran's voice is half lost in the pub noise and half in his own mug, "Which is good to know,"

" - which is probably just as well because these blasted women _will not leave me alone_."

Zevran laughs abruptly, heartily, and for longer than what Aen thought the comment warranted. He calms enough to clarify, "You shall have to teach me your secret technique, then, as our darling bard hasn't two words to spare me and the swamp witch would rather place my head on a pike than in her lap! _Haa_. A shame, really."

Aen's lip curls, but his disdain is ruined by an irrepressible grin, "Perhaps you try too hard, ser Crow?"

"Perhaps Ferelden is a dreary, frigid country of insufferable prudery, ser Warden?"

"Hah! And here I thought you found it exotic."

"So I do, but have yet to be proven wrong about the prudery."

"Is that a dare?" Aen's voice is deep and quiet, fingers woven loosely together around the mug, bright eyes smiling though his mouth had fallen impassive and his pale eyebrows had risen archly.

Zevran leans forward, inclining his chin. "I suppose it could be. Perhaps when you are less drunk."

There is a small tense silence, Aen thumbing a splinter from the table. "That would hardly be fair to you, as you wished to know my, er, secret technique to attracting women, was it? Nothing better than a first-hand experience."

"Oh ho, I am to be the victim of your charm, then."

Aen's voice is kept to the intimate mumble of his dry rejoinders, "Skepticism. I am wounded."

"Forgive me, dear Warden. I thought you were giving proposition."

"No, no, we both agree; too drunk for that."

"But perhaps you are not really all that drunk?"

Aen chuckles bitterly, glancing up from the table at last. "Who knows? I might stand and find myself incapable of navigating a path to my own room, much less the conversational path to _your_ _intentions_."

Zevran is already nodding, arms crossed atop the table, "Ah, you have taken offense to my refusal."

"It is impossible to offend me." Aen stands, collecting the empty mugs together in a clatter. "I merely find myself inebriated, and in sore need of a good buggering." A pause, to let the admission stand on its own, then - "What _fairness_ could be found in that you had every intention to kill yourself on my figurative sword without our ever meeting otherwise? Why that I had not been_ first_ a seduction, _then_ an assassination?"

Zevran perks from his contemplation of the empty mugs. "That would have worked in your favor, you assume?"

"I can't be _arsed_ to even wonder." Aen wobbles in place, squinting across the taverna, disgruntled at his own inebriation. "How could it, though? What kind of a man do you take me for?"

Zevran's hum is indulgent, "That is a rhetorical question, I assume; though what kind of a man I would _take_ you for is not something I should admit aloud in public."

Aen barks a full-bellied laugh, loud with ale as he departs the table. "Good night, Zevran. Leliana will be along in a few hours."

Zevran sighs, hand held up in defeat. "_Bena nochis,_ Warden."

* * *

><p>The loft is hay-strewn and warm, and the bodies within lay still and quiet beneath their sleeping furs. Zevran crests the ladder to pad silently to the cot holding Aen's prone body, crouching to prod carefully at a bony shoulder under a hill of wolf pelts. "Warden. You are sobered now?"<p>

Aen's answer is too immediate to be anything _but_ sober and wide awake - "Mmn? Yes. You aren't, obviously."

Their voices are kept low, but the urgency puts a heat to Zevran's curiosity which comes off louder than intended - "Would I have truly succeeded in killing you, had I lured you with wiles?"

Aen's answer is flat and, again, immediate - "No."

"What." The floorboards creak as Zevran shifts in place, elbow on the side of Aen's cot. "Why not."

"First sign of trouble and you'd have sneezed your own intestines."

A scoff, "But I'm chaaaarming."

Alistair turns in his cot, exposing the sword he kept at bedside. "Not when people are trying to sleep, you're not."

Zevran flops moodily down on his own cot, muttering about prudish dog-landers as he pries free of boots and armor.

Aen smiles up at the rafters, pulling both arms behind his head to bask in silent contemplation of the difference between a friend and a lover, and how small the gap between the two titles really was.

* * *

><p>. x . X . x .<p>

* * *

><p>Alistair finds him in the stables, marveling over the labor bulls who pulled the refugee caravans to and fro. Alistair clears his throat to announce his approach. "Aen."<p>

Unruffled, Aen does nothing more than as pivot on one heel to regard Alistair, then return immediately to his inspection of the hulking beasts in their pens. "Alistair."

"Stop _flirting_ with the _assassin_."

Aen clasps his hands behind his back, addressing the nearest window. "Mmnnno."

Alistair mocks, "Mmmn_yes_." He crosses his arms, resolute. "I'm pulling rank on this. No more kissy-face with the stabbity tattooed guy sent to kill us. In fact? I almost prefer it you were snogging Morrigan again."

Aen searches the air between them, staring over a now tense shoulder. "Is that jealousy I doth espy?"

"Right, attack my manhood. Very mature."

"It's not an attack; I asked a question. He's a popular fellow. I'd not want to step on the toes of any budding romances."

"Why am I the only one who thinks hopping into bed with every other roadside psychopath we happen to recruit is a bad idear?"

"Well!" Aen laughs, turning at last from the spectacle of the beasts to step toward his fellow Warden. "I've also gotten a lecture from the Sten, if you can believe it. He seems to think it's a waste of time, which is a refreshment from the usual 'you don't know what you're doing' rubbish."

"You _don't_ know what you're doing."

Aen's grin is feline. "I've a few gratuitous tales to prove otherwise."

"All right!" Alistair pinches his brow, shaking his head behind the cover of his gauntlet. "Enough." He drops his arm, shrugging, unhappy. "You're a grown mage, you can do as you please, just..." Disapproval turning to a meek plea, "Just be careful."

"Zevran fights by our side every day. You have to trust that he wouldn't go through all that just to turn around to stab me."

"I'm not talking about the stabbity part anymore." Alistair hesitates, stepping back from the threshold of the stables, then returning, an uneasy rock from foot to foot. "He just doesn't seem the _type_ to actually... _care_ about anyone." An overfed silence, broken by Alistair clearing his throat. "Not that I know him all that well myself, but there you have it."

Aen swallows. "Oh." He busies himself with a loose thread on his sleeve, trying to repress a grin with a frown. "I see. Right." The thread is tucked away, rings clinking busily against one another.

"Right."

"Thank you."

"No need."

"Truly."

"Think nothing of it."

A short, dry chuckle. "I will try my damnedest to do just that."

"Well." Alistair balks, inclining his chin. "I mean, think _something_ of it. Obviously."

"But not enough to land me in your bed, instead of the bed of any number of murderous psychopaths with whom we happen to be traveling?"

"I - right." Alistairs stews in an abrupt pause that would have been comical were it not so weighty. "Wait, excuse me?"

Aen holds his hands up, helpless and hapless. "People who close curtains should light lamps, is all I'm saying."

Another silence, another false start, Alistair glancing from outside the stable and back in, to Aen, to the bulls, back outside. "You're having me on, aren't you? This is another one of your subtle wordsy traps, isn't it?" A forced laugh. "All right, I've learned my lesson; I'll keep my nose out of your business."

"Alistair," Aen's voice breaches that line of levity at last, dropping all tension from the air.

Alistair is stuck between relief and suspicion. "Nnh?"

"Has anyone ever told you - "

"No. Yes. Please shut up."

Aen pulls his voice low, one step closer. "Your eyes -"

"I'm not listening! La la la la la - "

Another step closer, "- and Maker, those _hands_."

"Eeeesh." Alistair crosses his arms to hide the (gloved, gauntleted) hands in question, turning his back with a glare. "Stop that."

Aen's grin widens, exposing teeth that much resembled those of a rabbit. "I'll stop harassing the chantry-boy, if the chantry-boy stops the interrogations over any of my potential bed mates, which only ever _almost_ included Morrigan because she enjoyed seeing you squirm, by the way."

"Yeah I very much needed to know that. Huge load off my shoulders. Fully admitting defeat and walking away now."

"But I haven't gotten to the part where I compare your sturdy shemlen frame with that of a particularly romantic Dalish god."

Alistair flashes a rude salute, and takes his leave of the stables.

* * *

><p>. x . X . x .<p> 


	4. Chapter 4

. x . X . x .

* * *

><p>"Maker, is it ever <em>cold<em> on this mountain!" Leliana kicks another bit of charred wood aside, the clatter echoing through the high, icy ceiling of the mountainside temple.

"Only as bad as any expected Ferelden winter. Have they have snow in Orlais?" Aen had summoned the blaze to the flagstone pit without prompt, taking a seat next to Genetivi on a toppled pillar.

Zevran interrupts darkly, shrugging his cloak closer. "They surely haven't any in Antiva."

Aen accepts half of Genetivi's notes, pouring over the sheaves with wide, eager eyes even as he speaks. "A little cold isn't slowing Sten down, and he's from Seheron of all places."

Alistair joins the small camp, dragging furniture for their pyre. "Sten is _also_ the size of a house, and buried in armor."

Aen flips another page, voice sing-song, "_Metal_ armor."

Alistair counters, "With leather and _cotton_ padding." A chair goes sailing into the flame, a tide of sparks flurrying towards the icy stalactites looming overhead. "If it's any further evidence, I myself am quite comfortable. Aen, your, ah, your lips are turning blue."

Aen is largely amused by this revelation, having lived the entirety of his known life in a drafty stone tower - in the middle of a _lake_ - through _all_ seasons. "Really? Anyone have a mirror?" To his expert bones, the vast weathered chapel was shelter enough from the wind to be perfectly habitable.

Alistair throws his hands up in exasperation. "Of course you'd think it was _fascinating_. Of course. Wear this."

Aen casts a side-eye to the offered cloak. "I'm not slinging your Templar skirt around my shoulders, Alistair. It'd look ridiculous."

"It's not a - fine, lose an ear. You'll look very dashing when your fingertips turn black and fall off."

"Great Maker, do you really think they would?"

"Stop _enthusing_ over the idear of frostbite!"

"All right, all right, if you're going to hen-peck me about it." Aen reluctantly returns the sheaves of brittle paper to their grizzled scholarly escort before moving closer to the fire. This puts him beside Zevran, who tosses a sly grin to Alistair before casually draping half of his wool traveling cloak over Aen's shoulders.

"Oh, that _is_ a keen idea." Leliana crowds against Aen's back, shivering as she contributes her own cloak to their embrace. "Lighter armors should huddle together near the fire, don't you think Morrigan?"

Alistair scoffs. "Rhetorical question; Ice Queens don't mind the cold."

Morrigan arches one eyebrow, sneering. "I should know the notion of _group cuddling_ in the midst of enemy territory would match you for daftness, but it_ is_ an appropriate response to a problem of basic thermology transfer."

"I never took you for an expert on appropriate group _anything_." Alistair begins to break another chair into pieces, feeding the fire slowly. There is a gap in the banter, more than one set of eyes glancing surreptitiously Zevran's way.

Zevran returns Aen's expectant stare with mild surprise. "What? Frostbite on my ear?"

Aen whispers, "Were you not listening to the conversation just now?"

Zevran matches the whisper, mouth twitching up as Aen draws closer to better hear: "Hmm? No, I suppose I am simply, ah, preoccupied. Did I miss something good?"

Aen doesn't drop the eye contact, unsure grin falling and restarting all over again. "An opportunity, nothing more."

"Ah, for shame. Well, I shall be certain to keep my wits about me from now on."

Aen shifts under Leliana's weight, stomping a numb foot back to life. "Mmhm."

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>"Why do you do that?" Alistair rarely addresses Zevran, and even rarer still does he address Zevran in private.<p>

Zevran, for his part, has made good on his habit of seeking seclusion, even amongst the abandoned rooms of the fallen chapel. "Do? Do what, precisely?"

Alistair pulls a chair between them, eying the book in Zevran's hands even as it is traded in for another from a looted shelf. "Pick on Aen, just to get a rise out of me. Don't think I haven't noticed."

"Hoho, you've found me out. And, come to think of it, answered your own question." Zevran thumbs through the book, stopping in the middle, reading, then snaps the book shut to trade it for another, moving down the shelf, toward Alistair. "Perhaps you'd like to know why I persist on drawing forth your ire, yes?"

"Er... sure. Yes." Alistair steps the chair back, gloves creaking as he tightens his fingers around its back. "I'd like to know that."

Another book snaps shut, is traded. "I find myself growing bored, bickering is fun, and you're the least likely to explode any part of my anatomy or flee in tears."

"No, really."

"Yes, really."

"Okay but..." Alistair deliberates, greaves scraping a fidget across the edge of the chairback. "Even if that explanation wasn't so transparently juvenile, why involve Aen?"

Zevran shrugs, finger poised in the book's margin. "He doesn't mind. You do. Trust me, dear Warden, it says more good about your character than it does anything bad about his or mine." Zevran walks the distance back up the row of shelves. "Giving you the chance to be the valiant presumptuous windbag every now and again saves who-all else in our company the honor of your sermons, and everyone is happier all around." Zevran tilts his head, laughter sharp as he gathers another book from a shelf, tucking both under his arm. "Perhaps especially Aen, who we both know already holds you in high regard - and would topple over in cardiac arrest should you ever confess equal sentiment."

Alistairs has craned forward to watch Zevran's retreat, chair balanced on its hind legs to support his lean. "I've got this strange feeling you don't like me."

"Nonsense! I like you just fine." Zevran meets Alistair's eye, smiling genially. "But I am having a bit of fun with you, as they say. Heh, in truth, I don't do this 'picking on' your elven comrade, and really have no idea to what you ask."

"Right." Alistair nods, biting the inside of his cheek. "Short and long of it; stay away from him. I don't trust you, I don't like you, and if you ever betrayed him I'm not the only one who would kill you."

Zevran's volume lowers, trace humor and all pretense dropped as he stalks down the shelves, books clattering to an empty place. "This surly side of yours is rather fetching, but jealousy is an ugly shade of green in any season. As they say."

Alistair pinches the bridge of his nose, blinking hard as he stands from the support of the chair. "I'm not jealous, for the love of - look, just stop whatever it is you're trying to get away with all the sidelong glances and the smirking and cozying up fireside, all right?"

Zevran crosses his arms, now within Alistair's sword reach, leaning against a bookshelf to glance him head-to-toe. "Tsk, and here you went and gathered all your courage to deliver that mean talking-to I so obviously had coming to me. You do realize though, at this point, if I were to suddenly take up ignoring our dashing young catamite that he would only respond in greater effort to win my attentions, yes?"

Alistair matches a step to close the distance between them, sudden fury darkening his features. "If you were to ever address Aen as Catamite again I swear on every dead relative that my sword would answer you for it."

Zevran carefully releases his dagger back into its sheath, clutching empty fists open and shut a few times before responding. "This is an insult, this word?"

Alistair steps back once more, throwing his hands up with no small amount of relief. "Of _course_ it is! Calling someone _that_ in any frame but a tavern brawl is nothing short of _heinous_. And he's a _mage_, too, Maker's sake! If you were any less politically correct - where did you even _hear_ something like that?"

Zevran's eyebrows are up, but he is more amused than alarmed, more curious than wary. "Besides in a tavern brawl? Well now, I don't know if your delicate sensibilities can handle the news, but as I never meant to draw the threat of _violence_ between us, perhaps - _perhaps _you should know that Aen refers to himself as such, and rather openly too."

Alistair's face crumples. "You jest."

Zevran holds up both hands. "I was under the impression that it was a term defining men who have sex with other men. Recently have I learned it is an exclusive title, but other than that, I admit, I fail to fully grasp the meaning, this _catamite_."

"Well I suppose in the strictest textbook definition - " Alistair's voice is flat, as if he's addressing a crowd on the merits of apple peeling. "That is, what a Catamite is _today_, in the eyes of the Chantry - "

"Oh, here it is. The Chantry. Of course."

"At least, among Templars... oh, I think I need to be sick, or to beat something up. Surely he can't mean _Catamite_..."

Zevran grabs a book just to have something to slam back into a shelf. "You realize you drive me mad with this suspense, do you no? Because I cannot think you mean to imply that the Maker himself gives a _rat's second nut_ about buggery. _Mierda_, you Fereldens and your sexual hang-ups."

"It's not just... augh, okay. Right." Alistair shakes his head in a furious shiver, pacing away and near again. "So, _sometimes_ men and women in the Circle Tower have to be segregated, or rather all the time, actually - mages and, others. No sense piling up a bunch of bastard mage-babies in an enclosure with limited space. There are other ways to dissuade out-of-marriage mischief but the one that works best is to just never leave a man and a woman alone in a room together, ever. Not even if one of them is Templar, or Cloister initiate, or Tranquil -" Alistair shudders, grimaces, reluctant to continue but answering Zevran's hand-roll of encouragement. "It's bad enough for the Templars, I imagine, with vows and all that, but one can only guess how bad this is for the mage half of the Tower populace. A Catamite is..."

Alistair takes a deep breath, slumping to his acquired chair in defeat. "A Catamite is the appointed 'woman' in a group of very desperate men, not exactly by self-election. Not that it's generally discussed outside of bawdy initiate horror stories, but the implication _I_ always got was that Templars pretty much allowed, er, _the tradition_, among certain generations of mage populus, and were even encouraged, or not _encouraged_ exactly, to uh. In a moment of weakness, seek out - because it's not as if the incident could result in anything as disastrous as a _pregnancy_, now could it? The sacrifice of one for the benefit of the majority." Alistair inhales sharply, still pale. "And he's an _elf, _too, Maker's breath..."

Zevran's frown is academic. "No, you are right, perhaps he did not mean the full implication. Although, that would explain his attitude toward _you_, would it not?" An enlightened chuckle, "And why he so passively accepts the romantic advances of any man with a working set of, ah, _eyes_."

"Not another word," Alistair groans as the parallels clicked into place. "Not one. I don't even have the strength to threaten you, so really. _Really_. Do your best not to fuck my best friend. That'd be keen."

"I was _raised_ by whores. I do not understand wherein lies this great tragedy."

Alistair leans his elbows on his knees, face hidden behind half-curled fists. "We can just... go ahead and stop talking about this. Aaany time now."

Zevran grunts, unimpressed. He selects a book from the collected pile, and taps the shoulder of Alistair's armor with it in passing. "I shall leave you to your incredulity, then."

* * *

><p>. x . X . x .<p> 


	5. Chapter 5

. x . X . x .

* * *

><p>"Again."<p>

"I'm never going to get this right. Why don't we just eat the poor animal already?"

"Young man, I am not always going to be around to help you out of a scrape. Either you learn the healing arcana, or face the Blight unprepared. Now," Wynne throws another hex towards the stunned cow twenty paces out in the field, which drops once more to the dirt with a grunt. "Revive."

Aen lifts his staff anew, stepping awkwardly in the lunge. The spell goes wide and sends a frond near the bovine's head shooting up into full bloom.

"Not the plant, dear; the cow. Like this." Wynne's demonstration is slow and patient, and the heavy animal before them soon finds its legs again, tottering uneasily to the left. "Try not to think of it as application of energy. Rather, you're undoing the magic of the hex itself. You're drawing it up and away, and letting the natural order within the cow right itself. Living things want to be healed - always remember that. It is a coax, not a force."

Aen nods, scratching a nicked ear. "So are we having steak tonight or not?"

"_Maker_, nevermind your stomach! Again!"

The cow bellows as its legs are knocked out from under it.

Aen blinks at the excessive force, chewing over where Wynne of all people could have developed _that_ skill. He shrugs the matter away for another time and puts her advice to practice - the animal springs to a stand and shakes itself, casting a dreary moo in their direction.

Wynne nods, coolly triumphant. "Better. Again." The cow goes down.

"Why don't you teach me that hex instead?" The cow staggers up.

"There are hundreds upon thousands of ways magic can be used to harm. There are only twenty learnable spells in the entire addendum of the healing craft. Only _one_ life revival incant. Everything else is necromancy." The cow loses feeling in its back quarters, wide-eyed over the development as it wobbles in paralytic confusion.

"So you're saying healing arcana, is, what? Multi-purpose? All-inclusive?" The cow is freed, and begins to inspect the dirt on which it was standing.

"Intuitive." The cow is up-ended.

"Ah. I see." Aen rights the animal before it can hit the dirt; once on its feet the cow puts a bit more distance between them.

"I believe you have gotten the hang of it, Aen. Well done. Now," Wynne cracks her knuckles, tamping the dirt with her staff. "Revive." Mid-stride, the cow goes down, this time in a spray of blood.

"_Maker_, Wynne! Was that necessary?"

"Yes, it was. Revive."

"I mean," Sweat dots Aen's brow as he works his mind over the foreign schooling. "Surely we don't have to hurt the thing in earnest. At least not until supper."

"Better a cow in practice than a comrade in battle, dear."

"A fair point, but if it keeps up that distressing noise we might attract some equally hungry beast, and we're closer to the camp than I'd like for any dragon to ambush us."

"I suggest you learn to heal the cow quickly, then."

The cow staggers up. Aen straightens with breath of relief. "Perhaps we could try again another night?"

"The darkspawn won't wait for you to recuperate, and neither shall I." The cow suffers grievous injury to its back, and the bovine's scream is deep and resonant.

Aen shivers and drops his staff, throwing a glare over his shoulder as he jogs the distance to the ailing cow. He draws his field knife and wraps an arm around the cow's neck, cutting deep across its throat in an uneven saw. Aen holds the massive head in both arms to keep the animal still while it bleeds out, its belly a large brown hill rising and falling slower and slower. "Send Alistair over to help me butcher this. We're done here."

Wynne had followed at a pace, cradling both staves. "When it's Alistair with a broken neck, will you turn him into dinner as well?"

"_Wynne_."

"I know you've lost much, boy, but there is no excuse for giving up. Next time you will obey me or we truly shall be 'done here', as you so boldly thought to announce." But Wynne's voice softens, pulling her own field knife to bend and help with the skinning once the animal had gone slack-jawed and glassy-eyed at last. "How did you _suppose_ the craft is learned? While you impractical chaotic lot get to throw fire at wooden targets and ice stairwell banisters for sport, it's healers who are elbow deep in a dead horse's innards to diagnose their own mistakes. Thanking the Maker every day after the lesson that they never have to cut open a pregnant woman just to heal the babe inside, or amputate a soldier's leg they simply weren't skilled enough to cleanse." She stands, wiping her brow with the back of a bloodied hand.

Aen is equally covered in filth, dirt and bits of grass from his time on the ground with his dying charge. He rocks back on his heels, wiping the blade with the hem of his tattered robes before sheathing it. Aen occupies his silence with stretching the skin out for the setting sun and the flies. He and Wynne continue wordlessly, turning the carcass between them with the strength and practice gleaned from over a year on the road, limbs as strong and backs as bent as any peasant family at a warm evening chore.

Hound is attracted by the smell of fresh meat, bounding from the bushes to plough his muzzle unceremoniously through a pile of steaming innards.

"_Hundt_." Aen scolds the beast with a swat to his flank. "In whose tent are you going to sleep, with liver on your breath?" He hefts a leg of meat over his shoulder, bending to help Wynne with her armload while refusing to address her directly or meet her eyes.

In camp the meat is rinsed, quartered, and set to pot. The leg is put on a spit immediately while Oghren and Sten disappear to collect what they can for salting into jerky. Aen and Wynne retire to their respective tents to change from bloodied clothing, neither responding to Alistair's bewildered questions, nor Bodahn's compliments at dinner, nor even the light ribbing Zevran turns on the pair for their icy stand-off.

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>"Oooh, you are making fun of me again!" Leliana pulls Aen back by the scruff of his robes, mussing his short hair. The day is hot, the travelers over-burdened, and any attempt at good mood is quickly extinguished by the encroachment of the muggy Ferelden summer. The teasing loses its charm by mid-day, when the sun is at its worst; Zevran and Morrigan begin to snipe with razor-sharp witticisms and general morale takes a nose-dive through the course of their verbal blood-letting. Even Hound seems to carry an ill mood, head held low and tongue lolling out so far that Aen feared he'd trip on it.<p>

"I wonder what this is, Blight or just plain drought," Alistair muses, eying Bodhan's pair of roadbulls as they labor before the trundling cart with dead enthusiasm. "Think we should find water for the animals soon?"

Aen pauses beside Bodahn's slowing cart. "Hound has veered to the west a few times so I wager that's our best bet. Stream, it sounds like."

Alistair's bad moods only ever get as far as him taking on an official air of impatience, and he claps his hands as the cart stops in the roadside. "Right. Let's find a clearing to set up camp and send a party out. You accompany them to keep an eye out for spawn and other beasties."

Aen isn't about to fight for rank, and does as he is bid. "Hound and I are going to go soak in a cold stream. Any takers?" Ignoring Alistair's indignant squawk 'that's not what I meant' and Wynne's harsh 'honestly, there is work to be done', Aen points to Leliana's desperately raised hand and thumbs over his shoulder at Morrigan. "Ladies first it is, then. Wynne? You're always complaining about Hundt's smell, now's your chance to grab the soaps."

Wynne chuckles, rolling her eyes. "Oh no, I'd not want to blind anyone."

Aen narrows his eyes over his shoulder, scoffing. "Nobody's going to be naked."

"That is what _you_ think," Leliana mutters, passing with a long stride. "Come along good Hound, you can keep the _grindeleux_ from snatching up any maidens, yes?"

Wynne sighs, sharing the load of empty water skeins with Aen as they depart, satchel of soaps markedly left behind.

"How does he _do_ that?" Alistair mutters, staring after the slightly cheered group. "If I'd suggested a bathing party with a bunch of women I'd have been thrown in the ditch."

"No mystery there." Zevran shoves a bundled tent into Alistair's arms. "I doubt our Warden would plan anything lascivious with Wynne as chaperone. As finely aged a woman as she may be."

"What, no accompanying slander? No horrifying suggestion of Wynne being old enough to have changed Aen's diapers?"

"Hoh. What is so horrifying about that? It is probably true."

"Have _you _ever changed an infant? Forget darkspawn, it's _people _spawn that are the true terror. They come from women's Deep Roads, shrieking with unholy vigor. They do nothing but eat and leak from every orifice, and leave exhaustion and destruction in their wake. _Exactly_ like darkspawn."

"You are a very strange man," Zevran congratulates, arms now full with sacked grain for the bulls.

Alistair accepts one of the burlap sacks, patting a bull's flank as Bodhan tends the harnesses. "Hah. And _you_ go on the long list of people who have said those exact words in that exact tone of voice. Conformist."

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>The field is a dry, dusty yellow. Aen and Zevran lounge in the tall grasses, a few paces apart, keeping watch between the road and the campsite. Zevran contemplates the sky, propped back on stiff arms, before starting: "Child."<p>

A scoff. "Hypocrite."

"Catamite."

Aen's eyes narrow, but he cannot repress the smirk. "Coward."

Zevran sighs. "Sadly, yes." A moment of reflection. "Pike-twirler."

The laugh is startled out of Aen, too loud and at once hushed behind his own hand. "Says the man who could not imagine going a week without, let alone two years. Here we've been on the warpath for, what, almost a second year already? Pike-twirler, yourself."

"No no, none of this using of the same insult. Plagiarizer."

"Hmm." Aen fingers a blade of grass, bending it back and forth until it breaks free between his knuckles. "No-good-dirty-rotten sellsword?"

"Heh. Rather weak, that."

"I know. My head's just not in it right now. Buggerer."

"Clearly your thoughts are over-run with a single topic. Shall I help ease your mind, _pajarito_?"

"Hey now, keep to insults _il comprende_. Knicker-sniffer."

"Dog-lover."

"Puppy-kicker."

"I insist I was merely shoving the beast out of the way of harm. I just happened to be using my foot. Molly-legged whoreson."

"I'll have you know my mother was a seamstress. Gap-toothed butcher."

"My teeth are perfectly straight, as you are aware. Skinny runt."

"I _am_ taller than you."

"Skinny nonetheless."

"Hmph. Lumbering lard-ass."

"My hindquarters are perfectly taut, as you no doubt are also aware. Pipe cleaner."

"You already called me skinny."

"No no, a pipe cleaner is a euphemism for -" Zevran searches the grass between them, lazy in the sun like a basking reptile. "Actually I do not know to which pipe it is referring, but I'm sure it's filthy innuendo nonetheless."

"Huh. Pox-ridden philanderer."

"Bureaucrat."

Aen feigns a gasp of shock. "You have gone too far, ser. Take that back."

"Fine. Villain."

"Better, but not very obscene, is it?"

Zevran lets out a forced sigh. "I suppose my heart is also missing from the effort. You are not as easy to insult as the drunken Dwarf."

"Ah, so Oghren finally got someone to spar with him, did he?"

"What sparring? It was hardly sport and largely predictable, since our smelly little friend is such an open book. Dissolved from barbs regarding hygiene - his lack and my suspicious bounty thereof - to the inevitable genital comparisons." Zevran grimaces in retrospect. "I left before he divested of pants in his attempt to prove the victor."

"Hn. Wise decision."

"Ha-ha, you see? You are so agreeable, I find it difficult to work up a proper ire."

"I should work on being less agreeable, then." Aen sits straighter with sudden inspiration. "_Daft_ buggerer."

"A-ah! You lose."

Aen scoffs, waving away Zevran's conclusion. "It's a valid insult; I called you daft. I just decorated it with buggery."

"No good. I win."

Aen slumps back to his slouch, glaring balefully out at the roadside. "Fine. Can't think of anything particularly clever right now anyway. _Damn_ this _heat_. My head is all a-fog."

"Ah, you see again?" Zevran's fett wag before him, crossed at the ankle, rustling what long-grass was not already flattened under him. "The perfectly _disagreeable_ thing to have done would be to argue further the validity of your insult. You give in too easily to the demands of others. It is not healthy." The grin makes itself known through Zevran's voice, though he has attempted to conceal it by studying the far side of their clearing. "I worry for you."

Knees drawn up, Aen begins to trim his fingernails idly with his field knife. Eventually he throws a laconic gaze over the blade at Zevran, who is busy at weaving braided rope from the dry grasses surrounding them. "Want to try at a different word challenge? To while the hour until our intrepid hunters return?"

Zevran fidgets the grass rope-ends into his lap, seeking a comfortable recline while keeping his eyes to the road. "Sure. I'm game."

Aen hums, pulling himself to a stand. "Yes, I daresay you are." He crosses before Zevran to reach the roadside, perching on the higher end of a storm-toppled tree, one leg sticking out from his robes as he crossed his legs underneath himself.

Zevran stands as well. "Aha. Beg pardon?"

"That's the only warning you get. Still wish to proceed?" Aen smirks at the reflection in his knife's edge, eyes darting cold and bright over his shoulder.

Zevran strides forward, glancing down the road. "Color me intrigued, dear Warden. Though it is hardly fair to invite me to a word puzzle without first explaining the rules of the exchange."

Aen smirks, knife digging a soft hole in the weather-rotten bark of the trunk on which he sits, sun beating bright and hot along his bare shoulders, sweat collecting at the thick collar of his robes. "You already know well the rules."

"Come again?"

Aen keeps an even, quiet tone. "I'll not raise my voice. You know the rules." The satisfaction curled in Aen's belly gives a flutter as Zevran pulls himself to the tree, reclining closer so as to better hear their exchange.

Zevran's eyes glint with knowing, though he regards the road as if it a demanding audience. "I ought not play if I've no chance at victory."

"You're a clever man; I have utmost faith in your cunning."

"Mmh, a match of wits, is it?"

"Of a sorts." Aen begins to split stray threads at the hem of his robes with the field-knife, determinedly avoiding eye contact.

Zevran crosses his arms, leaning forward to fest elbows to knees. "Is it anything similar to the so-called 'wordsy traps' you get up to with Alistair, this game of yours?"

"Perhaps it is, at that. You know I shan't hold back with you, though."

"Oho. I look forward to it, then." A hardness settles into Zevran's expression, tugging Aen's anticipation up a notch as their eyes meet. "I even think I grasp the concept. First to abdicate or refuse to answer loses a point to the opponent, yes? Allow me to start?"

Aen's smile is bright, eyes nearly shut for their squint in the daylight. "My honor as a gentleman demands it, even."

"Then, I choose the topic." Without skipping a beat, Zevran's voice takes on the contemplative drawl of the tactfully curious. "You spoke of not 'going easy' on me, at some cost to suggest that you _do_ take your ease with our royal bastard, no? Would it displease you to hear that he told me - "

Aen's interruption is sharp, and swift, and maybe a little too loud to be at all casual. "Nope. I don't care if he's told you that he slayed thirty ogres or rutted every milkmaid within a mile; I don't want to hear about it. Next."

Suspicious, Zevran wipes a bead of sweat from under his chin with a swipe of his thumb. "Then you concede a point?"

"I do, for that at least." Aen shifts, discomfitted but recovering. "We'll go to five. Or is that too agreeable? I could be more difficult, you know, but not to please you or anything because that would go against your advice." Aen's eyebrows are raised, expectant, bringing a tension to the stale afternoon heat.

"Hoh, I see." Zevran matches the shift atop the fallen tree, carefully neutral in the mimic. "Well then, to my topic: I was given a bit of information from, ah, a source that you demand remain nameless." Aen's smirk reappeares, and Zevran continues, "Regarding the insult I delivered earlier, the one that gave you pause? It seems your self-applied title holds a, rather weighty, shall we say, bundle of definitions."

"Bored." Aen's eyes sparkle, though he throws his head back as if to plead to the cloudless sky. "Boring. Bored. Already figured that out. Alistair was nearly a Templar, Templars are scared little church mice, you two inevitably discussed me and my sordid past, you clucking hens, you. Over-reactions on both sides, predictably. Did he blush?"

"Er. I do not remember such a thing as a blush, no. There was a threat of violence. This was some time ago."

"Hmm. Well that's _almost_ interesting, but it doesn't concede you a point. To answer properly: yes, I was bent over the barrel by a few Templars, and yes it was consensual. You couldn't pry one of those men out of his armor with a lever, nevermind a few coy words and a flash of neck."

Zevran sits forward, attentively doubtful. "Neck?"

"The uniforms cover us chin to toe, equally high collars as the one I wear today. You'd understand if you saw them." Aen waves lazily. "None of this concedes a point for me either, though. Draw."

Zevran leans back, pleased. "So far I take the lead, and as a gentleman myself I ask you if you wish to proceed?"

"Of course; it's my topic now."

"Ah. Of course."

Aen sheaths his knife and cracks his knuckles, then plucks a blade of grass to weave with a few errant strings from the hem of his robes. "The remark that I give in too easily to the demands of others - would it please you to learn the why and the how of it?"

A scoff. "I know you aim to keep the peace, Warden."

"Oh, but perhaps I did not make myself clear. Your actual complaint was that I had given in too easily to _you_, was it not?" At Zevran's hesitation to answer, Aen nods, smug. "Do you wish me to proceed?"

Zevran flicks his hand through the air between them. "I care not."

"I might disagree about that, if only for the sake of being less agreeable."

"Continue your case, Warden."

"Already so testy! I'd almost claim the point on principle alone." Aen shakes his head, picking as carefully through his words as he did the tall weeds around them. "The 'how' of it you know already. Neither of us can muster any actual resentment against the other, even in jest. You've been nothing short of courteous and accommodating since the day I helped you from the mud. Even a bit flattering at times."

"Eha. Only the _merest_ bit."

"Hah. Yes. Only." Aen shuffles so that he is facing Zevran, legs crossed, elbows leant eagerly on knees. "I needn't inventory the alluring stares nor intimate drunken anecdotes, need I?"

"Your point is that I fancy you?" Zevran raises his eyebrows, mouth closing in a thoughtful frown. "I admit it: you are fancied."

"No, no, no -" Aen soothes, palms out. "We aren't talking about _you_." His smile is a predatory contradiction, rabbity teeth under a wolfish gaze. "The topic is the _why_ of my giving in so easily to your demands, even if you consider it against good health. Even if, say, it could mean the death of me."

Zevran shifts, glancing around the roadside. "Perhaps -" His protest is weak, though, and Aen ploughs ahead.

"Or _perhaps_ you don't even know all of the _hows_ of the topic at hand? How I would, in fact, give you the shirt off my back, the supper from my bowl? It'd be terribly _agreeable_ of me, certainly, to give you the blood from my veins should the whim strike you." Aen's tone remains neutral, as if in professional debate. "The _why_ of it, however - "

"Perhaps we ought change topic."

Feigned surprise. "You concede the point? Was I being too agreeable?"

"Entirely so. I do not wish to know the why of your sentiments."

"Would _you_ ever give me the blood from your veins?"

Furtive, immediate: "Yes."

"The shirt off your back?"

"Of course."

"I mean, right now, would you strip your armor and give me your tunic."

Zevran blinks, laugh aborted as Aen's icy stare cuts through the strong daylight between them. There is no emotion Zevran can read beyond the intensity of Aen's curiosity, as if he did not truly know that such a request was, in part, utterly ridiculous. "I, of course - I _would_, but - "

"But what? Surely you would find more comfort in this heat without that stifling leather, and I do not sense any darkspawn nearby. Don't tell me you're shy?"

"Oh, ehah, no. Of course not. But I do believe that's your score just now. We are tied two from five."

"Interesting. You grant me another point if you refuse to divest."

A true laugh now, surprise evident in the lay of Zevran's shoulders. "I am not giving you my tunic."

"Then you lied, in saying that you would." Aen flutters his pale eyelashes, smiling gently. "A lie would win me the tie-breaker, you know."

Zevran huffs, reaching for the belts of his chestplate, smile nudging its way through his consternation. "There are easier methods to see me laid bare."

"I'll be a gentleman, then." Aen turns his back to Zevran, straddling the trunk with his hands pressed flat against the warm bark, allowing himself a private smirk.

"I could very well demand _your_ tunic, Warden."

"You only address me as Warden when you're annoyed, you realize?"

"Tchah! Nevermind that. I believe it is my topic, yes? Let us speak of more pleasant things, yes." There is momentary lapse in conversation as armor is tugged off. Zevran all but moans in relief, carefully watching the thin back turned to his regard, mapping the tension in Aen's shoulders. Zevran sets the doubled leather of his chestplate to the grass below their perch, tossing his linen tunic to the log between them. "That does feel better, I admit. To my Topic then, Warden, as a rough estimate - how many lovers _have_ you had? For curiosity's sake."

Aen's turn does not quite bring his glance over his freckled shoulder. "Casual encounters, or established friendships?"

"There were a limited number of men in that tower. Do not presume to brag."

"You yourself ought not underestimate the beauty of an elf of fourteen summers."

"Fourteen summers! Get an early start on you, those Templars?" Zevran plucks his tunic up, shaking it out, folding it in his lap, casual with the implication.

"I was always a bit of a prodigy. In a lot of fields. To your question, the estimated average… Thirty? Seems about right. Five years, six per year -"

"Did you have nothing better to do? Study your craft, perhaps?" This said with a velvety chuckle, brimming with appreciation.

"What's your point, Zev?"

"Mm? No point; I was simply curious. Who wins that round? Other than the thirty-odd men, Templars among them." Zevran's tunic lands in Aen's lap, damp with sweat in the humid, cheerless day.

"You win the point."

"Why." Zevran's voice is close to Aen's shoulder, raspy with laughter, the heat of the sun blocked by his proximity.

"Because I would never ask you to number your lovers."

Zevran scoffs. "And why should that bother me, if you chose to do so?"

Aen does look, now, hands full of the tunic. "Might you consider that I am the one to be bothered by the knowing?" An amendment - "For pride's sake, and because I aim to win this challenge."

Zevran nods, biting his lips. "Our hunters are overdue. Might we move to the shade, perhaps?"

"If you wish." Aen slides fluidly from the fallen tree, brushing his robes out with practiced cheer, airing his prize on the stroll from the roadside. Once sat in the cool shadow of a browning oak, Aen continues casually: "You've never taken full advantage of any opportunities to bed with me, but you've also never missed an opportunity to suggest as much. It is my Topic."

Zevran takes a hard sit, reclining against the dry bark of the oak, scratching his bare back up against the tree with a groan of relief. "I shall concede the point on that one."

"But that would bring us to a tie again, three from five."

"You should have saved that question for last, then. I too play to win."

"Are you poxed?"

"Am I - " The laugh Zevran lets out startles a few ground fowl from a nearby thicket. "No. It is hardly that."

Aen glances away from Zevran's bare chest as it shakes, loosing the top button of his robes. "Is it that you merely do not wish to? With me?" As always, Aen is never so much _concerned_ as he is academically curious, eyes narrow over a grin.

"Oh, I wish it. Sometimes twice a night." Zevran utters a low Antivan curse. "I conceded the point. We are to the last challenge, no?"

Aen rouses himself from his mystified introspection, waving a hand from its perch on his knee. "Your topic, then."

"Have you truly never laid with a woman?"

"Who says I haven't? The Circle had women."

"And?"

"And, well, they are very squishy? I could just as soon rutt a pie stolen from the ovens, with a couple of pillows thrown in for purchase."

"Hoh! Quite the unique description there. Did you not ever marvel at the curves, the fragility?"

Aen's blank stare is interrupted by a wandering fly. "Well she had stamina for miles, but the same could be said of a giggling feather-mattress."

"Wow, eha… You know what? You win. That is perhaps the _coldest_ comparison to the female delights as I have ever heard. Congratulations, you are one steely bastard." Zevran seems to dust his lap of the matter. "That was your game? Terrifying."

"At least you didn't cry. Alistair always cries."

"Why did you rob me of my shirt?"

"Ten coppers from Leliana said I couldn't."

"T'che! Ruthless."

"I've been surrounded by two things my entire life: stone walls, and people. I had to grow skilled with one or the other, and I'm certainly no mason."

Zevran settles back with a hum, arms crossed behind his head. "Quite the validation." His eyes drift shut in the caress of a lazy summer breeze through their clearing.

Aen shuffles himself closer, palms and rear-end tamping the grass down on his path to the tree's base. "Zevran?"

"Mmm?"

"If you don't open your eyes, I am going to kiss you."

"Mmm. Dire threat indeed. Wake me when they've caught our supper."

"I mean it. Victor's spoils."

"Mmm."

The rustle of grass. "Zevran."

"Mhmm?"

"Open your eyes." Aen's nose brushes the tattooed cheek.

"Nnh." The grin makes the kiss difficult, and Zevran's eyes are clamped tightly shut.

* * *

><p>. x . X . x .<p> 


	6. Chapter 6

. x . X . x .

* * *

><p>There is a boy of nine years, and he has taken near the tower rafters in hiding. "<em>Shhh<em>, hahaha." He waves frantic plea over the deep burnished edge of the library shelving.

Jowan paces below, stern and worrisome even at the willowy age of ten. "You're going to fall. You're going to get _caught_."

"Not if you keep quiet about it," Aen reassures from the dizzying height of his reverie. "C'mon up."

Jowan, a sickly child with a near-constant runny nose, props his hands against his hips in an attempt to look more commanding. "I haven't climbed a bookshelf in years and I'm not about to get demerits for it now. This is seriously dangerous, En; just _get down_ already!"

Aen rolls to his stomach, flush against the flat, dust-caked wood of the top-most shelf. "Hey, there's a window. Think I ought fly?"

"That's not funny!" Jowan's nasal whine begins to attract on-lookers, the way a distressed child's voice often could.

"Come up and catch me, or I'll fly away. Just like Marzi." Two slender arms flopped over the edge of the burnished mahogany, drowsily mimicking bird flight.

"Marzi _died_." The hitch in Jowan's breath draws a cloud of red hair peeking over the precarious edge. "There wasn't enough left of her to sew back together."

A laconic objection snags at the air, an older elvish boy nudging at Jowan's shoulder with a knuckle. "He's only doing it for attention, you know. Just let Templar Brennan catch him."

Jowan hisses, "Stuff it, Kiernan. I'm not going to rat _En_ out to the Templars!"

There is a muted chuckle from above, the head and arms disappearing from immediate view. "Maker's mercy, that has got to be the largest spider I've seen all year. You guys down there want to see it?" Aen's foot slithers into view, seeking the next platfrom down. "I could catch it."

Jowan rolls his sleeves, coaxing a leg-up from Kiernan. "The only thing you need to catch is a headful of sense."

There is a tense silence as Jowan climbs, Aen waiting for his friend to join his side before pressing his enthusiasm. "Seriously, I think it could eat a cat."

"You've never _seen _a cat, you don't know how big a -" Jowan nearly slips, clamping hands and elbows on what corners or persons he can reach. "_Andraste's fucking tits_, get away from that thing!"

Every other head in the study perks up at the commotion, if not the blasphemy.

Aen is still nothing but a pair of stocking legs dangled into view of those below. "I've got it from the back, see? It's perfectly safe."

Jowan's voice carries loudest from atop the shelves, high and tight with anxiety. "Safe for _what_? Just burn it up or something!"

Kiernan snorts from below, crossing his arms. "Oh yes. Fire atop a wooden book shelf. I'm getting an elder now. Fair warning."

Jowan composes himself with all the urgency of a _fairly warned_ delinquent. "Aen. I'm using my serious voice, do you hear? Kill _that_. Climb down with me."

There is a contemplative silence, the small crowd of eaves-droppers having swiftly dispersed back to their books to look as busy as possible under threat of an elder's arrival. Aen 'ums' and 'hms' with all the gravity of a scholar at lectern. "No… I think I'll let it out the window."

Jowan is, by now, caught up in the debate of the spider, rather than the short-lived debate on whether or not either of them should even be atop the bookshelves in the first place. "It'd only crawl right back in. Lay eggs in your ear while you sleep."

"_You_ kill it, then."

Jowan totters, catches himself with minimal damage to a volume about botany as the cat-sized spider is all but thrust in his face. "…It is kinda cute, I suppose."

Aen showcases the spider, turning it this way and that. "And even-tempered, look. Not trying to bite."

"I… maybe it could eat the rats in the basement storeroom. I'll help you down, just, y'know, _hold on _to that blasted thing."

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>"Oh, <em>le Créateur<em>, we are all out of heather! Aen, be a dear and get thee to the gardens?"

"Um."

Madame Gineva, as she liked to be called, abandoned the supplies list to blink owlishly over her lectern. "My, do not the ducklings usuallee leap at the chance for fresh air? Or dost thou fear to approach the metal men standing before our gardens courtyard?"

"I… don't leave the tower. You'd get your heather quicker sending someone else."

Gineva's pinched nostrils flare. "Kiernan, do you know the look of good heather? No mold on the leaves, flowers not yet gone to seed?"

"Um." Kiernan narrows his eyes over the stacks of books he was very clearly in the middle of cataloging.

Gineva blinks, pointedly surprised. "My, there is an echo in our companee!"

Kiernan scratches the side of his nose with the end of his quill. "With all due respect, Madame. Try sending somebody who isn't an elf to run your errands. We've nothing but cowardice and impudence in the Ferelden stock."

So it was that Aen and Kiernan, at the rebellious ages of fourteen and fifteen, respectively, found themselves fidgeting in front of the tower's garden exit, with fresh red hand prints on each right cheek. "Heather." Aen rasps, thrusting the signed pass forward. Kiernan remains contemptuously silent, fists on his hips.

"No; Jonathan." The guard is elbowed by his fellow, and they both chuckle in metallic whispers. He holds the letter up to better read through the slit of his helm and sighs, a muffled rasp of air. "All right, let's get this done quick. The fussy Madame likes her herbs fresh, doesn't she?"

Kiernan spits the rejoinder, "And her elven students obedient," to the encore of more chuckling.

Jonathan raps his gauntlet against his fellow guardsman's chestplate. "Think you can handle this lot, or ought I fetch Geoffry?"

"The blokes on patrol should be enough. Well, come along you two." The massive double-doors are cracked open with much huffing and metallic shoving and heavy budging, Aen rooted to the flagstones despite Kiernan's hearty shove.

Aen whispers furiously, "How much heather do we even need? Only one of us should have to go-!"

Kiernan rolls his eyes, digging his hands under Aen's armpits to attempt to lift him. "I don't know what good heather looks like, remember?"

A low whistle interrupts their exchange. "How about that. And here I've spent most of my days trying to keep mages _in_ the bloody tower." A fourth Templar, who had been recruited into the arduous job of moving the heavy door, agrees; "Make up your mind, lad; it's raining you know."

Aen blanches from the prospect of rain, from the rush of cool wet air and the _noise_ of it against the rocks and lake just outside the thickly barred threshold. A roar of constant motion, cold bright interruptions against his skin as a laughing Templar propels him through the doors by the scruff of his neck. He almost climbs Kiernan in attempt to return.

Kiernan shoves Aen away. "It's just to the garden and back!" Another shove, right into Jonathan's cold plate armor, to which Aen clings like a drowning mouse, fingernails scrabbling at the smooth metal for purchase.

The Templar is no longer laughing, trying to still Aen's hands before his fingers got a bad pinch in the maille joints. "Easy."

Kiernan stomps off through a puddle to escape the embarrassing display. A patrol guard halts mid-stroll, dogging Kiernan's journey to the garden after a brief wave of reassurance from Jonathan.

"What's wrong with that one?" The eastern patrolman (woman) interrupts Aen's litany (_the lake is going to swallow me up, oh holy Andraste, don't let it swallow me up_).

"Not sure." Jonathan half-heartedly tries to peel Aen from his side, which only produces a sob and mutual panic. "Doesn't like the lake. I think."

A curse, the woman's stance suddenly hostile. "Isn't that Irving's boy? You'd better get that lifer back inside quick before he tries to blow a hole in that lake for its offense."

"Maker! Why in the _Flaming Pit _would Gineva send Irving's boy out for herbs?" Jonathan manages to crab-walk his charge back over the threshold into the Templar's atrium.

The guardswoman attempts to gingerly prize Aen from his life raft, donating her own arm as substitute. "You know these Orlesian transfer cases. She'd use any excuse to humble the Ferelden Circle. There dear, Rosaline's got you. Can't wait until Irving puts that harpy to field. You know she actually ordered _my recruit_ to make her tea? I told him next time to spit in it, but you know Cullen's too good a boy to do anything _spiteful_."

The Templars gossip until Kiernan's return, fistful of muddy weeds shoved at his catatonic classmate.

The venom of Kiernen's voice is halved by the chattering of his teeth. "Bucket-head didn't know what good heather looks like, either. Let's just go take the walloping and fake sick tomorrow." His nudge breaks through Aen's terror, heavily imbued doors finally shut behind him against the growing storm.

Rosaline plucks the dripping herbs from Kiernan's grasp. "I'll deliver those." She shakes Aen gently from her arm, shooing both students through the archway connecting the corridors. "You two dry off in the dorms and report to your Instructors by regular curfew. No faking ill." The boom of her voice, enhanced by the ever-present helmet, is impossible to disobey.

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>A sword clangs against a stone balustrade. "Oi! Break it up!"<p>

Linen shoes scuff quickly away from the dark nook between the bookshelves.

One metallic echo of a voice answers the other, "Think we should start carrying buckets of water? Every Bloomtide it's like these unharrowed lot just lose their wits."

The sword is put back to its sheath. "Just the birds and blooms. Nothing to get jaded about."

"Who's jaded? If I hadn't taken my vows, I might be joining 'em."

"I expect you'll take _that_ confession straight to the Revered Mother."

"What about the - "

"_Now_."

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>Irving's eyes light the way a father's might, bringing an energy back to his corpus that had been waning under the toil of recent news. He pulls one hand to the doorway as Aen enters. "And, here is the lad I was telling you about." To Aen, "Congratulations on your Harrowing, young man. How are you feeling?"<p>

"Sufficiently harrowed."

Irving's proud smile is lost in a sea of wrinkles and graying beard. "I should like you to meet someone, dear lad. Ain'la O'ineach Surana, this is Duncan of the Grey."

* * *

><p>. x . X . x .<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Fun with Gaelic: About Names<strong>

_'Aen' is close enough to 'Ain', which quite accidentally means _  
><em>'light, heat, splendid' and 'fire'. The internet is a magical <em>  
><em>cross-cultural dictionary, no?<em>

_"Laoineach" (la-o'-in-ock) was the closest I could find to 'linneagh'; _  
><em>it means handsome. Aen's parents were an optimistic lot,<em>  
><em>who pulled the humiliating thing all parents pull and named<em>  
><em>their kid after the color of his hair ('Ginger', 'Pepper'…'Rusty').<em>  
><em>Other candidates: 'lainnir' -brightness; or 'lethbhreac' - an<em>  
><em>equal, as in a twin.<em>


	7. Chapter 7

. x . X . x .

* * *

><p>"Urh..." Aen is curled on the dark slate of the dungeon floor, the sharp stink of piss and old hay thickening in the back of his throat. The first thing he notices on waking is the draft across his skin. "Did they have to take my trousers? Honestly."<p>

Alistair is unsurprised that, despite the bruised muffle, Aen's first words are a precise, full sentence.

Head trauma usually gave grammar back as the last thing, but even though Aen does not yet stir he seems able to very compassionately _dialogue_. "Not like the trousers were enchanted. The tunic, I understand; all manner of weapons to be hidden in a tunic," he says with a dreamy sort of detachment. "Read about it once; you can piss on a linen tunic to strengthen it and use it to twist open prison bars." Rolling at last to his side, Aen's eyes focus beneath an impressively bruised forehead. The wound maps half of his face, a mottled purple and angry red under the dark brown of dried blood.

Alistair hisses air in through his teeth, but does not move from his corner. He is sat, ribs cracked and aching, helpless in his ignorance of the attention a thrashed elven body might need and doubtful he could do anything if there were any broken bones. "Are we awake now?"

"No." Aen's eyes close. He coughs, and groans with all the bitterness of old blood caking the corner of his mouth.

"Well, good! Keep yourself asleep; it's only going to get worse from here on out."

Aen curls in on himself, and shivers."You're in a _mood_."

"Yes. If you haven't noticed, we're in a _dungeon_."

"Naked."

"Naked. Bloodied. Soon to be tortured, starved to death, or if we've any luck, killed without further humiliation."

Silence falls between the Wardens, interrupted only by the fidgeting of a nearby prisoner in his own cell. Aen's shoulders hitch up with a long, rattling breath before he speaks. "You can't die _soon_ from starvation. The whole point of it is that it takes a long time."

"You know what I meant."

"Yes." Aen's head jerks up, ears pricked back in a posture that reminds Alistair of a hound at hearthside who's just heard a knock at the door. "Is that the change in guard patrol?"

"Er," Alistair pulls himself to a stand, dusting clammy bits of hay chaff from his thighs before hobbling forward to peer as best as he can through the bars. "Yes. Why? Planning something?"

"Oh... wow, that's. Hn. You are _very_ naked."

Alistair turns on heel to peer down at Aen (who has covered his face with both hands and rolled with a groan to his side, ears red). "No more than you." He can't help the bristle of superiority, because yes, they were both naked but there was really no helping it and sometimes it amazed him, how someone as clever and practical as Aen could at once be so... immature. "Are you laughing?"

"No." A suspicious hiccough.

"They must have hit you harder than I thought. You are _laughing_."

"I'm... weeping, truly."

"Uh-_huh_. Overcome with emotion at our predicament, are you?"

Like a snap, as quickly as the autumn winds change, Aen sobers. "Alistair," His ears remain pink at the tips, but that could just as easily be from cold as it could from residual embarrassment. "When the guard makes his third round, I want you facing the stone wall, asleep."

Alistair drops his voice and crouches near Aen's bony back. "What, you mean pretending to sleep? What are you planning?"

"No, I mean _asleep_. Or at least as still and quiet as you can manage." Aen struggles to an elbow, gingerly curling upright to a sit. "Maybe stuff some hay into your ears. Make certain you are facing the stone."

"Are you going to cast?"

Aen's limbs tense in the crouch, and he still doesn't meet Alistair's eyes. "What? No, the bars are enchanted against that sort of thing. Just do as I say."

"I trust you, but I'd still like to know what you're planning. In case something goes badly wrong, I'd like to be prepared." Alistair crosses their small cage to settle once more against the grimy stone floor, stretching his legs out and bunching the limp pile of hay under his head as if to nap.

Tentatively, Aen uncurls into a stand, arm propped on cell bars to wait for the world to cease lurching around him. "I just can't do this with you watching."

"What," Alistair protests, glancing over his shoulder at Aen's willowy and pale nudity. "I've seen you kill people before."

"_To the wall_, Warden."

"Wow, _okay_, sheesh." Alistair had felt a small lurch inside of him at Aen's tone, a hard knot settling in his stomach. "Shy, are we?"

"Just follow the orders you've been given, and we'll be free of this place soon enough."

Petulantly, Alistair does not follow orders. He slows his breathing and pretends to sleep, attentive. On the second clanking pass of the guard, Alistair chances another peek over his shoulder.

Aen is leaning against the bars by the hip, arms crossed as if he were simply at a street vendor waiting on an ordered pasty. By the third pass of the guard, Aen has reached a hand up to support a lithe stretch against the iron bands of the door, and lets out small groans of appreciation as his joints pop and crack in relief. The noise, quiet as it is, seems to echo in the vast stone dungeon, and Alistair's breath catches in his chest.

Nose to the wall once more, Alistair suddenly _knows_ why he should have followed orders. The hard knot in him tightens, burns. He ought to put a stop to it, but it isn't his place to doom their escape attempt. Even their decrepit neighboring prisoner was keeping silent and still.

The Guard does not bark his order so much as deliver it like a Mornmas greeting. "Oy, away from the door, you."

There is an apology, a shuffle, and Alistair can only imagine Aen repositioning himself and - ugh. _Ugh_... was it too late to stuff his ears with straw?

Aen honeys his voice. "Bit bored. Blondie over there hasn't woken up yet. Blighter's probably dead; I know how fierce you uniformed men can be when you've been ordered to take the boot to someone."

Alistair's spine prickles as the guard's eyes passed over him. "Looks like he's still breathing... but I'll send a healer around tomorrow if he ain't perked up yet."

"Can you _do _that?" Aen sounded dazed by the very offer.

"'Course I can."

"Hnn." Aen's bare foot slapped gently against the stone floor, and every bit of Alistair recoiled. "What to do in the meanwhile, though? I am _dreadfully _bored."

"No helping that, sorry." The guard is whistling as his footsteps carry fainter down the passage.

Alistair hisses to the stone, "Laying it on a bit thick, aren't we?"

"Not thick enough I'd fear, and silence yourself or else you ruin my concentration."

"They change the guard every three patrols," Alistair insists. "You've missed your chance."

"No," Aen's whisper is triumphant. "The next guard to take duty will have been from a room of idle reserves, and he or she will have volunteered their shift because they just heard the _funniest _story of this flirty little elf down in the cells with nothing on his hands but time and nothing on his bones but his own skin."

Their bearded neighbor chimes in helpfully, "He's right, you know. Lotsa military rejects end up in guard reserve - this Fort happens ter be where criminals _and_ careers are put to die, and I ain't never met a dying career what didn't come along with its own set of degen'rations."

Aen extends a long finger, "Plus, I'm an elf."

The prisoner grunts, "Right, elves is always gettin' fucked afore they go. Watch yer skin, though. If it's Coris what comes back he'll knock ya dead and have at the corpse."

Alistair scoffs, voice tight. "Oh, thanks for that." He rolls to a sit. "I'm convinced. You aren't doing this. We'll find another way to - " standing, he pauses. "Why are you... please don't look at me like that."

Aen is studying Alistair, and it is almost to Alistair's relief to see that familiar cold regard back in Aen's expression - even if it was dragged across Alistair's skin from head to toe. Alistair returns the scrutiny, checking for scrapes and broken bones and finding relief that, aside from the head wound and the mild case of insanity for which it seemed responsible, Aen was in good health.

One of Aen's nicked ears twitch, and a flicker of anxiety crosses his already pinched expression. "We haven't time to argue."

With that, Alistair finds a hand on his throat, dry and cool and slim, and a hard thin leg behind his own, and a steely band of strength around his arm, and then he is on his back and all the breath has left him and all the stars in the Maker's sky are bursting just behind his eyes, burning through his very bones - for all the world, that had _hurt_. The floor shifts under Alistair and he realizes that he had just been disabled and that Aen is _rolling_ him back into position against the wall and every inch of him feels ill and what if something _happens _and he is too incapacitated to help - after all he was the Templar, the Shield, he was -

"What's he groaning about?" Their guard. The one whose shift was supposed to be over.

Alistair stills, fury quelled in the fragile moment of opportunity.

Aen pads quickly to the cell door. "No idea. You think he'll wake up soon?"

"Flaming hell, I hope not. Stand away from the door, quick like."

"Hn."

Alistair wills his ears to close, to fill up with blood or bile or by any small miracle simply shrivel up within themselves. The creak of the cell door, the clank of divesting armor, the breathy encouragement and slap of skin against leather. What was taking so long? Couldn't Aen just zap the guy? Did he need help? Hating the necessity of it, Alistair turns his head to blearily review the situation.

Aen is trying to get into a position to break the man's neck, that much is clear. The guard is a large man, though, and his blissfully ignorant passion was interfering, as he would grab first one of Aen's arms and then the other, trying to guide Aen's hands to his trouser fronts. Alistair squeezes his eyes shut, willing his mind to clear in preparation of a swift assault. Maker, but he nearly blacked out again just _thinking_ about rolling to a stand. Sparing another glance, Alistair finds that Aen has his legs around the guard's bucking hips, had freed his hands at last, and - within a blink, at the wet crack of bone - the man is dead.

"Could think of worse ways to go," Their neighbor muses. Alistair kicks the bars against which the dirty stranger is leaning, bruising his heel at no disruption of the prisoner's bald appreciation.

Alistair turns his bad mood back to Aen, attempting to sit. "Couldn't you have just zapped him?"

Aen is caught half-hidden between the guard's bulk and the cell bars, breathless. "Dungeon. Still enchanted. Arse." The guard tips backward and Aen lowers the body as quietly as he can, then crouches to deftly unfasten the uniform. "Put this on as soon as you can stand." Aen's movements slow, chest flushed and heaving, the gash on his brow bleeding anew from the exertion. Half of his drawn face is streaked by the stark and glistening red of new blood, shades of dirt and lust coloring whatever skin fear and stress had not painted white. A drop of the blood falls to Aen's collarbone, and Alistair cannot look away as the red bead rolls down the gentle valley of skin. Aen snaps his fingers. "Alistair? Are you injured?"

Alistair blinks, eyes gritty. "I... I think I must be."

"Oh. Er. Sorry about that, then." Aen stands with an iron key in hand. "In all fairness, we didn't have time to argue."

"Serves me right for questioning orders." The acidity of Alistair's sarcasm is diluted considerably by the fact that Aen's plan had actually _worked_, but - "So where do we go from here, fearless leader?"

"You get that armor on, first. No, leave the smallclothes. You know what happens to a man's bowels when he dies."

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>Alistair now studies his fellow warden in the late gloom of the evening, wordless and still a bit stunned. Properly healed, properly disguised, the two had hitched a ride with an empty potato cart returning to Denerim on its shipping sojourn. They relaxed now at the insistence of the rocking cart beneath them, of the open night sky that held its peace above them. They were free. It had worked, all of it, the bluffing and the flattery and the theft and the distractions... Picking their way cautiously through lie after lie only to collapse, woozy and exhausted and starving, here where they were to regather their thoughts and sort through their Officially Confiscated (stolen) equipment. Alistair's armor had been too heavy to sneak out, but they had two guardsman's incentives between them to buy something new at the first glance of a Quartermaster.<p>

"Are you all right?" Those hadn't been the words that Alistair had been practicing in his head, no, he had intended to say something with a fair degree more scorn - but he was plenty used to blurting out the unintended and made no correction against himself.

Aen scoffs. "You aren't the only one who's played witness to murder before."

"What! That wasn't murder, you were - "

"I was saving your life."

That gives Alistair pause. He turns his helmet between his hands, studying the play of shadows and reflections in the polished metal. "You were saving the lives of the only two Grey Wardens Ferelden has left, and ensuring that your country does not fall to the Blight."

"Yes..." Aen drawls. "But I was foremost saving _your_ life." A heavy silence. Aen scoffs impatiently, heavily put-upon by the silent nag of intense curiosity Alistair is particularly talented at radiating. "The guard's name is stitched on the inside of his tunic. It reads Coris."

A stunned heartbeat, Alistair unsure if he should laugh or not. "You're a bloody liar!"

"Check it yourself. You are still wearing it, aren't you?"

"How is that saving _my _life?"

"He wouldn't have underestimated you."

Alistair huffs, "I - you - "

Aen does not turn from his position at the cart's end, legs dangling out over the road. "Kindly retrieve your eyebrows from the heavens, lest they injure a bird."

"I... Look, I apologize, all right? It's not as if I thought you _incapable_, or anything. I only - I mean - there could have been a _better_ means of escape. Something safer, for you. You were hurt much worse than I at the start, and I - " An incoherent grunt of frustration, "We could have done something different." The trundling mule-pulled cart passes over a cobbled bridge, and the insects of the waterway throw their chorus up between the gaps in conversation.

Aen argues, gently - _stubbornly_ - "I knew the guard's type at first glance, Alistair. Even if I had been wrong about our Coris and his leering, well -" Aen echoes Alistair's frustrated incoherent grumble, "You weren't exactly forthcoming with any alternative plans, yourself."

"Maker, Aen, what do you suppose I had been doing the whole while before you woke up? _Praying_? I _had_ ideas, you just didn't care to hear me out at the time and, _argh_, honestly, you speak as if you're turning into Morrigan with every passing day - as though you think I'm just some idle idiot who's only holding you back - " Alistair's voice cracks at this, betraying his fear.

Aen is a tense silhouette just out of reach, swaying with the rocking cart at every bump.

Alistair coughs, palming the back of his neck. "And maybe I am? I would never have done what you did, I would never have been _able_ to even - "

"_Seduce_, Alistair. The word you're looking for is 'seduce'." With that, Aen turns and pulls his legs up to his chest, stretching first one bent knee and then the other. The armor is elven issue, but his skinny limbs seem lost in all the leather and chain. "Do you hear a Mabari barking?"

"Don't change the subject. I'm wallowing, over here."

Aen draws in a sigh. "I did tell you to keep your eyes averted. You can't unsee it, can you?"

"If there was any way I could take my memory out and scrub it against a washboard, I would."

Rather than blanch, Aen smiles. Rabbity teeth flash through the gloom and the hard sick thing inside of Alistair releases, finally, just disappeares like a knot of dry twine in a campfire. Aen laughs, stretching his legs out in front of himself. They are very long, those legs, putting Aen that much taller than most elves, and Alistair has to look away the moment his memory strips the limbs of their armor and sets one hard, skinny knee behind his own as the soft, long fingers gently and expertly choke-slam him into the unyielding dungeon flagstones -

"However did you learn to throw someone over your hip like that, anyway?"

It takes a moment for Aen to process the question, and he waves it away. "Oh, you know. Training. Just in case I'm ever caught on the dry."

"What," Alistair's own lighthearted tone is still shaky. "You mean whenever you and Zevran disappear from camp, it _actually_ is just to teach you close-quarters combat?"

"Er. Yes. Are you sure you don't hear that? It sounds like Hound."

"There are plenty of Mabari in Ferelden, and don't change the subject." Alistair shuffles to join Aen against the wooden clapboard, stuffing their effects securely under his head and locking his fingers over his chest as if to doze. "With all the innuendo that Antivan keeps throwing about, I'm not the only one who thinks you two are always just trotting off to have a tumble in the underbrush."

"Saints ablaze, Alistair. That's a bit uncharacteristic of you, isn't it? To suggest such a thing."

Alistair yawns, slouching down, getting comfortable. "It's plenny charact'ristic. Not my fault we never get to talk like manly men anymore." Alistair's stomach lets out a small murmur of discontent, which evolves into a loud growl, and he turns to his side with a frustrated sigh. "Andraste's arse, I'd slay the Arch Demon just for a decent meal and a good night's rest. Saving the realm would merely be a happy bonus."

"You should sleep, then." A dry, cool hand falls to Alistair's head, stroking down and back through the short bristles of hair at the nape of his neck. Alistair thinks perhaps he's just been sorceled into sleep, when something heavy and barking tips the potato cart sharply to the left and he springs upright, weapon drawn. Aen is a set of limbs splayed under the mountainous wiggle of an anxious Hound, laughing.

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><p>. x . X . x .<p> 


	8. Chapter 8

It was funny, how long time could stretch itself out when all you wanted most was its speedy passing. Aen contemplated the difference between traveling on foot, which seemed to go much faster because one was involved in one's own movement, and traveling by other transportation, which seemed to take an eternity simply because there was nothing to do but talk. Aen... did not wish to talk. He wanted Alistair to fall asleep and forget about everything that had happened in the past month, like when he suggested the man take up his rightful throne, or that fiasco with rescuing Anora, and _especially_ the time spent in the dungeon, when Aen had shown a side of himself of which he was never very proud and could they both just go back to bantering like a mage and a templar were wont to?

He _loved_ Alistair, as a friend and a doting peer, as a knight would love his king, and even as a maiden might love a man just for being Alistair's usual sarcastic, vain self. The conflict arose when Aen could no longer be a friend or a mooning maiden or a loyal subject. When he _had_ to be the leader, the superior Warden, the harsh voice of logic. He could not love Alistair in those moments, because in those moments he _despised _his dear friend. Hated his weakness, his naivete, his self-pity and his oh-so-high-handed morality.

Though Alistair was Jowan's every opposite in deed and appearance, the two were remarkably similar. Aen could never just love or hate Alistair, could never push him away but also could never cross that final line in drawing him close. Frankly, it made him a bit ill to feel so strongly all at once, and when Hound skidded to a reverse on the roadside, nose to the dirt, and eventually leapt to the cart bed to join them, all Aen could do was laugh and laugh in relief. Because now there was a dog, and Alistair could go ahead and just talk about the bloody beast scaring the last ounce of sweat from his veins and Aen could talk about the dog's remarkable abilities and a dog was there now and they were going to talk about the dog so everything was going to be fine.

They weren't going to talk about seduction, or who was tumbling whom into the underbrush at night, or the fact that Aen had only laughed in _sheer exasperation_ at Alistair's nudity because the man's body happened to be _the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen_.

Eventually they passed two shady travelers headed toward Fort Drakon. As this was the trader's road and thus the longer, more arduous way around the city, there was really no cause for anyone to be traveling on foot who weren't patrol guards. Hound whoofed, low and subtle.

Zevran turned, while Morrigan announced that the dog could do as it pleased and they'd chase after it no longer, striding confidently ahead until she registered the lack of witty response. Upon seeing the guard uniforms in the gloom, her first act was to draw her staff. Zevran and Aen both threw up their hands, Zevran stepping in front of (but never daring to touch) the witch.

"Morrigan," Aen reassured from the slowing cart, waving.

"Not bandits, is they?" The driver turned around form his perch and flicked the end of a swollen nose.

Alistair scoffed, nudging Hound out of the way so he could get comfortable again. "Them? Oh, sure. Especially the sneaky looking female. Very bandit-y, that one. Drive faster."

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><p>. x . X . x .<p>

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><p>"Maker, look at you! You are <em>very <em>ill, let's get you inside quick."

Zevran rolled his eyes. Aen wasn't what one might describe as 'conventionally attractive', but he did appear young and overworked; an easy target for slavers. Zevran, however, was much too handsome and well-kempt to make the cut (a beautiful elf might be missed by a spouse or employer). Zevran _swaggered_ while Aen could pull off a more convincing _slouch_.

The slaver theory was merely a suspicion thus far, though the mages guarding the front of the clinic looked much too well-fed and sly to be charity healers. Perhaps Aen simply _did_ look sickly, as it had been pointed out by more than one of their companions that the Darkspawn Taint did absolutely nothing good for a Warden's pallor.

"The rest of you need to wait outside, please. I will remind you that the quarantine is for your own good."

Zevran watched the Warden disappear into the mysterious 'clinic' without further question, and held Shiani back with a glance, hand on Leliana's arm. His calm did not go unjustified; mere moments later there was a loud explosion, and all mayhem broke loose, the Warden at the eye of the storm.

* * *

><p>. x .<p>

* * *

><p>"I wanted to thank you for what you did. For those elves. You could have gained more political support as well as some rather hefty financing, you know."<p>

Aen's eyes narrowed, and for a moment Zevran feared he might have misspoke. "Don't tell me you're surprised."

"Not at all. Do not misunderstand." Zevran crossed his arms, contemplating the marble tile of Eamon's estate. "Not many people would have done what you did, elven or no. Even fewer of those would ever hear a word of gratitude for their efforts. So, I thank you. I know the weight of the things you sacrificed."

"_Things_, Zevran. I would never choose material possessions over innocent lives."

"I know." Zevran lifts his eyes to Aen's hard stare, smiling. "You are a good man. And please, what have I told you? Call me Zev."

Aen's expression softens, though the wrinkle of concern lingers on the bridge of his nose. "Is that all?"

Zevran raises his eyebrows, blinking slowly. "Have I offended you?"

"Yes, a bit."

Zevran chuckles to mask the recoil, opening his mouth to ask after the nature of his offense, but Aen interrupts in a quiet fury, stepping close.

"I _know_ the difference between right and wrong, Maker's bloody sake! You had absolutely no cause to upbraid me in the middle of negotiations - which were a farce, if you haven't figured by now." To Zevran's silence, Aen rolls his eyes and begins to pace. "The easiest way to take down a dangerous mage is to get under his skin, to know his _mind_. Because _you_ pressured me into making a decision, we lost the element of surprise!" A hand cuts through the air, as if to silence any protest, which Zevran was too stunned to give. "Leliana should have never been injured. But because of your _assumption_, of your _suspicion that I_- "

Aen stops mid-pace, exasperated. "You were too deeply invested in the situation. Your emotions almost got someone killed." Shaking his head, more hurt now than angry, "And _what_ you must have thought of _me_, to think me capable of selling people - _how could _you?" Zevran recoils again, as if struck, mouth snapping shut. "After everything we've been through, as a team, as _friends_, and yet you still - !" A helpless assault of the air between them.

Zevran's face had drained of color, and he stood in a slump, dazed. "I - truly -" But no more words would come. He was losing Rinna all over again, assuming the worst about the person closest to him because he could never trust life to ever be as simple as 'here is someone to love, they will never betray you'. Aen's spiel in the dockside warehouse had been so _convincing _and Zevran could never imagine a man going through half of what the Warden had been through without letting the darkness stain him. Hell, two years ago Zevran himself would have taken the gold.

He tried to say as much, to reassure the lanky bundle of nerves and fury in front of him, realized that he'd never been scolded by Aen before, not in earnest, and could produce no appropriate response. Luckily, he himself was a very cunning creature, and of large enough ego that he no longer wanted to stand around getting berated. "You are... tired, yes?"

It was like letting the stilt off of a bellows; Aen deflated. "Yes." Ah, and now Zevran _did_ spot the circles under Aen's eyes, the barely healed wounds from their recent conquest, the drawn hollow in his cheeks. "I'll probably apologize later... but right now, Zevran, I am rather irritated."

"Serves me right. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, no?"

"And misery loves company."

"Misery also loves good wine, and a spot of supper."

"The road to hell is paved with... hot baths."

Zevran chuckles, relieved the storm had passed, still a bit pale and unsure of how to proceed. "We could be miserable together this evening. Just this once," He reassures quickly, sidling close but making no move to steer the Warden toward the stairs.

"That's not a _good_ intention, is it? Don't think I could survive another one."

"Perfectly sinister intention, I assure you." Too late Zevran realized the proposition in that, but by then they were walking side by side toward the kitchens, and nobody was getting verbally lacerated, and that was all he wanted, really. The fun stuff could start _after _they'd dealt with all this Blight nonsense.

* * *

><p>"Uh-oh, <em>somebody's <em>drunk. Oghren talk you into another manly bonding ritual?" Alistair plunks himself down in front of the fire with the breastplate of his new armor and a buffing hammer, ready to shape it to better fit with small clanging strokes.

"Mmh?" Aen is cradling a half-watered bottle of wine, lazy grin blooming full force because _hey_, it's _Alistair_, isn't Alistair a treat? "No." The grin falls back into the clutches of the moody introspection with which he had been studying the fire before Alistair had claimed half the divan and ruined his sulk. "Was giving Zevran the what-for; somehow ended up drinking this, this wine. How does that even _happennn_? Nn." Aen blinks up at the ceiling, certain that he's not pronouncing that word right. "Hap. Happen. Pen." An academic frown.

Alistair laughs, the chatter of the buffing hammer paused for his response. "Wow. What is _in_ that wine, and can I have some?"

Aen passes the decanter with a lazy wrist. "On the topic of Zevran... No, nev'mind, you hate the topic of Zevran. Hrp." A small belch. "I'm to bed soon, anyway. Was looking forward to a bath, but that's kinda sinister, innit?"

Alistair grimaces at the watery spirits, shaking his head over how much of a lightweight his fellow Warden remained to be. "Oh, sure. I used to think of baths as the highest form of evil. Granted, I was eight..."

Aen was regarding Alistair from the top of a large sitting pillow, which he now had clutched in his lap to rest his chin against, the deep blue velvet accentuating his mooning, narrow eyes. "Maker, Alistair. Never stop talking."

Alistair's hands slowed, stilled, and a tingle raced up his spine. "Er. Don't usually hear _that_. Hear a lot of the opposite though, har..." He panicked briefly under the attention, glanced to the tapestry hanging over the far wall for answers. Aen was _making eyes _at him.

"Do go on, it's the greatest thing when you bumble."

Alistair sat up straighter. "Don't be cruel."

"Am not either." Eyes narrowed, glaring at the fire, Aen turns his head to rest his cheek against the cushion caged in his bony grasp. "Don't be dense."

Instead of answering, Alistair resumed his work. The rhythmic melody of the buffing hammer eventually lulled Aen to sleep.

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><p>. x . X . x .<p> 


	9. Chapter 9

. x . X . x .

* * *

><p>"Stop making that face."<p>

"…Sorry?"

"No, _I'm_ the one who's sorry. You're not sorry, you're just pathetic. Anyway don't give me that look."

"Jowan, I… don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes you do, and I just want you to know that I am sorry and you shouldn't feel bad and -" The scuff of a stool, Jowan folding his long limbs into a defensive slouch and lowering his voice. "It's your pride that's wounded, not your heart."

A disdainful sniff, Aen flicking a bit of ink from the tabletop. "Of course it's just my pride. Pass a fresh quill this way so long as you're seated."

"You can be a real bastard sometimes, you know that?"

Aen averts his eyes to the parchment, eyebrow arching. "How am I the bastard, exactly?"

"Well, all right so I'm at fault here too. But I mean you _are_ sort of a terrible person. That's what I'd think, if I had any love for Templars. Which I don't. Anyway that's not my point." He drawls on in the same half-desperate, pleading cringe that Aen was beginning to resent. "Just don't be a hypocrite."

"Fine." Aen swallows, sitting up taller, quill stilled over the sheaf of parchment. "I shan't."

"You're my best friend."

The feather finally snaps in Aen's grip. He sets the ruined pen down, wicking ink from a thumb. "I'm your _only_ friend. You're the one who's pathetic."

"Oh." A snort. "Very mature. I suppose you actually think disrobing for the desperate wins you popularity?"

"No." The fury is quiet, and freezing, and Jowan wonders where his sunny friend is hiding and what monster had replaced him. "I am under no illusion about what I gain and what I lose. You assume that I care about all these simpering _sycophantae_?"

"You sure as hell don't care about the men whose careers you've ruined, so I'd like to know just whose side you're actually on."

"My own," Aen snaps, finally meeting Jowan's eyes with a set to his jaw. A hesitation, thin shoulders dropping. "Yours."

"Well I'm grateful for that, at least." Jowan kicks his legs out under the table. Aen kicks back.

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>"How olde is ze boy, Irving?"<p>

"Fifteen summers."

"He weeps like a child at the door of the tower, and clings to a Templar and begs like a terrified animal."

"Yes, and Kiernan is still carrying a Dalish chip on his shoulder; it was all in your report. I know."

"Irving, what... what happened to our young man in question?"

"Kiernan was a lad of seven when his father took him from his mother's clan and gave him to us. He will always blame the race of man for that betrayal. Try not to take it to heart."

"I mean the boy. _Your _boy."

* * *

><p>There was a boy of eight, and he was beginning his first tower classes with other boys and girls his age, human children with their thicker limbs and strange, wide faces, and elven children who spoke in riddles and wept the most.<p>

There was a boy of seven who discovered his best friend exhausted and pale behind a bureau, too terrified to fall asleep in a proper bed.

There was a boy of six, and he climbed every shelf in the tower and would often get stuck, like a cat, in some window or rafter with no happy way down until he got hungry enough to wail.

There was a boy of five, who hid himself behind Irving's robes.

There was a boy of four, who was not allowed near the stairs without supervision.

There was a boy of three, and he could spend entire afternoons pulling on Greagoir's beard.

There was a boy of only two, kept in a fire-proof swaddling cloth.

There was a boy of only one summer, and he was being drowned.

His brother lay badly scalded in their crib, breathing shallow, too hurt to even cry. The fortisier who had come to trim the infant's ears was nursing a badly burnt arm, and at least three other family members had been present for the ritual, now with fresh scald burns when the mother tried to put the fire out with boiling stew. The infant of only one summer had suffered no damage, other than a set of freshly trimmed ears.

He was now in a bog outside of the small southern farming hamlet, sinking fast. Drowning.

The mother wept, and was led away.

The next morning, after seeing the healers to her surviving son, Haryani Surana crafted a mourning wreath and carried it to the bog in which she had thrown her cursed infant. To her surprise, the bog was gone. Instead of the wild marsh, there was now but a vast sand pit, sweltering and smoldering and every plant dead. The bog had evaporated. In the middle of the sunken land an infant wailed, hungry.

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>"She dumped you, didn't she."<p>

Jowan spun on heel, back stiff, fists clenched. "Don't you sound smug! Oh gee, I _wonder_ if Aen had _anything_ to do with Bridget's sudden unexpected - _unexplained_ termination of our relationship? _ You are going to die alone and sad_!" Jowan dropped his volume, leaning in with a sneer. "Even your friends hate you."

Aen is only momentarily paralyzed by this, and only because he didn't think Jowan capable of such malice.

"Quite a tantrum you've just thrown, and all because you're crap at pleasing women." Getting punched is not at all the same as watching someone else get punched, nor at all like being the one who is throwing the punch. You think you've gotten the last word but suddenly are sprawled on the floor with a bleeding face as your best friend is shaking and snotting himself up with tears and anger and you try very hard not to laugh but you are, in fact, a bit punch-drunk.

Getting punched is, after all, better than being ignored.

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>"Hey. Been a while."<p>

Aen's bright eyes flick up from the book, fall to dull disinterest, and turn back to the page. He sighs through his nose, but does not answer.

"So er, Kiernan just got taken to his Harrowing."

Aen lurches forward, slamming the book shut. "What?"

"Yeah, they uh, don't exactly tell you when, they just call you right up when it's ready. When you're ready. You knew that, right?"

Aen studies Jowan with alarm and renewed interest. In the years they had spent on the colder side of rivalry, Jowan had shot up like a weed and gained an ever-present shade of dark stubble. He was still whiny, but that whine had dropped a few octaves and Aen had tried his best to ignore the pleasant tingle he'd get whenever his ex-best-friend (this was a valid title at the age of seventeen) was in the same room, speaking, not being an asshat, generally being a handsome sort of... wait.

"Is he going to be all right? Are they going to carry him into the dormitory on a plank of wood? What if he gets run through? What if he's made _tranquil_? Why does nobody tell me these things? I'm going to Irving." Aen is a mad dash about his bunk and wardrobe, picking books and papers up only to set them down in the exact same spot, expression bloodless and alarmed.

"Oi now, would you just relax? You should know better than anyone how capable a mage Kiernan is. Geeze, now you've gone and made _me _nervous."

"Go take a leap, Jowan," Aen throws over his shoulder as easily as if wishing Jowan a pleasant evening, striding towards the doors.

"Uh-huh. You're welcome for the alert, by the way," Jowan calls after, then wonders if he's done the right thing, or if he should have just left the poor kid in blissful ignorance. Kiernan was a capable mage, but he was also surly and rebellious. The seed of doubt that had fallen from Aen's wild-eyed panic began to grow inside of Jowan, too. But no, surely they wouldn't... it was _Kiernan_ for Maker's sake!

Harmless, a bit of rebellion.

...Wasn't it?

Jowan did not see Aen again until the next week, during their exercise march. This was unusual for many reasons, as Aen never left the tower and when he did it was rumored that he'd become paralyzed with fear. It was all part of what made him pathetically lovable, despite his nastier habits of manipulation and romantic infidelity.

Aen broke off from the group in a bit of a daze, which was an unusual act vetoed only by the fact that he had probably never even _seen _this side of the island. When he kept walking right up to the shore, the Templars weren't worried. Irving's boy was terrified of deep water. When he waded up to his waist, there was some shouting about his health and the lake and catching a bad cold, but the Templars were not yet alarmed. Irving's boy couldn't swim, so there was no chance of an escape.

When Aen waded up to his chin, and stepped off the rocky shelf to disappear completely into the murky cold, Jowan was already half undressed and struggling through the crowd. He'd risk the lashing, he'd even risk a bad case of pneumonia, he would risk _everything_, he would _drown _before he'd let Aen follow Kiernan and leave him behind.

Jowan's sense of self-preservation was much stronger than Aen's, and even though he was a terrible swimmer he eventually had help in dragging the limp body back to shore. A healer thumped the life back into Aen, and then got in line to berate them both.

Later, tucked up in blankets in front of the kitchen fire with a Templar dozing in the far corner, Jowan would pull Aen close and sing to him, quietly enough that one could ignore how terrible he was at it. When asked, Jowan would reply that it was a lullaby his mother used to sing, and they would both fall silent, and Jowan would agree with no-one that it really was sort of a wretched tune.

* * *

><p>x . X . x<p>

* * *

><p>Castle Redcliffe is but a road's length behind them.<p>

"East to the town, West to the logging forest. There's no road through the woods, so be careful."

"I'd feel stronger with some food in me."

"I guarantee the camp will be abandoned, and there is food in this pack. Try to be as far away from Redcliffe as possible before nightfall."

"Right, yes, rotting corpse monsters. How are you going to deal with that, with Connor?"

Aen steps close, handing the bag of supplies over. "He's an abomination, Jowan. You know what has to be done."

Jowan curses, shouldering the bag. "Why am I not surprised? Never do anything half-cocked, do you?"

Aen inclines his head, then grabs the back of Jowan's neck to tug him down to eye-level. "Correct." The word is a puff of air in the space between their lips, a sort of congratulatory warning on the obvious before the kiss closes the distance and Jowan has to hang on or risk falling over. It is an action of anger, their mouths as two open wounds pressed together only to keep the other from healing.

Jowan's head is spinning from bloodloss and incredulity; Aen's heart is trying to claw its way out of his chest, attempting to escape its cruel confines. There is a spark, and another again, and Jowan has dropped the satchel to grab Aen's skinny frame in both arms, armor creaking as a smokeless fire pushes its way across his skin and rakes through his hair and he realizes, belatedly, that it's coming from Aen. It doesn't burn; it's almost cool to the touch.

Jowan is still weakened, he falls to one knee. Aen follows, kissing harder, plundering with tongue and teeth and one single, long, desperate gasp. "You have to leave," he all but sobs, and the sound of it tears Jowan's elation into little glistening ribbons of heart tissue. It is the painful truth; he _has to_ leave. There was no choice left for either of them.

"I'll find you." The same grand romantic imagination that had Jowan dragging Lily along on an escape to a remote farm now had him living as a successful outlaw, tweaking the nose of the Chantry and eventually coming back to settle down to a life of poultice and tincture mongering.

"No, you won't." Aen hiccoughs, wiping his face with his sleeve and pulling away from Jowan with the ease of someone in much better shape than a recently escaped convict. "I'll be dead in thirty years, if not sooner." He delivers this news with some relief; the future is not so unclear, and must not be feared. He lingers no longer in Jowan's company, neatly putting his emotions back into order. As he stalks back toward Redcliffe, Aen manages to blurt out a plea; "Do not follow."

The tall, mildly sinister figure shrinks back to the roadside, and turns himself West once more.

* * *

><p>. x . X . x .<p> 


End file.
